Ubuntu Manpage: astraceroute - autonomous system trace route utility

NAME

       astraceroute - autonomous system trace route utility

SYNOPSIS

       astraceroute [options]

DESCRIPTION

       astraceroute  is  a  small  utility  to  retrieve  path  information  in  a traceroute like way, but with
       additional geographical location information. It tracks the route of a packet from the local host to  the
       remote  host  by  successively  increasing  the  IP's  TTL  field, starting from 1, in the hope that each
       intermediate node will send an ICMP TIME_EXCEEDED notification back to the local host when the TTL  value
       is decremented to 0.

       astraceroute  supports IPv4 and IPv6 queries and will display country and city information, if available,
       the AS number the hop belongs to, and its ISP name. astraceroute also  displays  timing  information  and
       reverse DNS data.

       Due  to  astraceroute's configurability, it is also possible to gather some more useful information about
       the hop regarding what it does and does not allow to pass through. This  is  done  by  using  clear  text
       strings  for  probing  DPIs  or ``great firewalls'' to determine if they will filter out blocked critical
       keywords. This tool might be a good start for further in-depth analysis of such systems.

OPTIONS

-H <host>, --host <host>
Hostname or IPv4 or IPv6 address of the remote host where the AS route should be traced to. In the
case of an IPv6 address or host, option -6 must be used. IPv4 is the default.

-p <port>, --port <port>
TCP port for the remote host to use. If not specified, the default port used is 80.

-i <device>, -d <device>, --dev <device>
Networking device to start the trace route from, e.g. eth0, wlan0.

-b <IP>, --bind <IP>
IP address to bind to other than the network device's address. You must specify -6 for an IPv6
address.

-f <ttl>, --init-ttl <ttl>
Initial TTL value to be used. This option might be useful if you are not interested in the first n
hops, but only the following ones. The default initial TTL value is 1.

-m <ttl>, --max-ttl <ttl>
Maximum TTL value to be used. If not otherwise specified, the maximum TTL value is 30. Thus, after
this has been reached astraceroute exits.

-q <num>, --num-probes <num>
Specifies the number of queries to be done on a particular hop. The default is 2 query requests.

-x <sec>, --timeout <sec>
Tells astraceroute the probe response timeout in seconds, in other words the maximum time
astraceroute must wait for an ICMP response from the current hop. The default is 3 seconds.

-X <string>, --payload <string>
Places an ASCII cleartext string into the packet payload. Cleartext that contains whitespace must
be put into quotes (e.g.: "censor me").

-l <len>, --totlen <len>
Specifies the total length of the packet. Payload that does not have a cleartext string in it is
padded with random garbage.

-4, --ipv4
Use IPv4 only requests. This is the default.

-6, --ipv6
Use IPv6 only requests. This must be used when passing an IPv6 host as an argument.

-n, --numeric
Tells astraceroute to not perform reverse DNS lookup for hop replies. The reverse option is -N.

-u, --update
The built-in geo-database update mechanism will be invoked to get Maxmind's latest version. To
configure search locations for databases, the file /etc/netsniff-ng/geoip.conf contains possible
addresses. Thus, to save bandwidth or for mirroring Maxmind's databases (to bypass their traffic
limit policy), different hosts or IP addresses can be placed into geoip.conf, separated by a
newline.

-L, --latitude
Also show latitude and longitude of hops.

-N, --dns
Tells astraceroute to perform reverse DNS lookup for hop replies. The reverse option is -n.

-S, --syn
Use TCP's SYN flag for the request.

-A, --ack
Use TCP's ACK flag for the request.

-F, --fin
Use TCP's FIN flag for the request.

-P, --psh
Use TCP's PSH flag for the request.

-U, --urg
Use TCP's URG flag for the request.

-R, --rst
Use TCP's RST flag for the request.

-E, --ecn-syn
Use TCP's ECN flag for the request.

-t <tos>, --tos <tos>
Explicitly specify IP's TOS.

-G, --nofrag
Set IP's no fragmentation flag.

-Z, --show-packet
Show and dissect the returned packet.

-v, --version
Show version information and exit.

-h, --help
Show user help and exit.

USAGE EXAMPLE

astraceroute -i eth0 -N -S -H netsniff-ng.org
This sends out a TCP SYN probe via the ''eth0'' networking device to the remote IPv4 host
netsniff-ng.org. This request is most likely to pass. Also, tell astraceroute to perform reverse
DNS lookups for each hop.

astraceroute -6 -i eth0 -S -E -N -H www.6bone.net
In this example, a TCP SYN/ECN probe for the IPv6 host www.6bone.net is being performed. Also in
this case, the ''eth0'' device is being used as well as a reverse DNS lookup for each hop.

astraceroute -i eth0 -N -F -H netsniff-ng.org
Here, we send out a TCP FIN probe to the remote host netsniff-ng.org. Again, on each hop a reverse
DNS lookup is being done and the queries are transmitted from ''eth0''. IPv4 is used.

astraceroute -i eth0 -N -FPU -H netsniff-ng.org
As in most other examples, we perform a trace route to IPv4 host netsniff-ng.org and do a TCP Xmas
probe this time.

astraceroute -i eth0 -N -H netsniff-ng.org -X censor-me -Z
In this example, we have a Null probe to the remote host netsniff-ng.org, port 80 (default) and
this time, we append the cleartext string "censor-me" into the packet payload to test if a
firewall or DPI will let this string pass. Such a trace could be done once without and once with a
blocked string to gather possible information about censorship.

NOTE

       If  a TCP-based probe fails after a number of retries, astraceroute will automatically fall back to ICMP-
       based probes to pass through firewalls and routers used in load balancing for example.

       To   gather   more   information   about    astraceroute's    displayed    AS    numbers,    see    e.g.:
       http://bgp.he.net/AS<number>.

BUGS

       The  geographical  locations  are estimated with the help of Maxmind's GeoIP database and can differ from
       the real physical location. To  decrease  the  possible  errors,  update  the  database  regularly  using
       astraceroute's --update option.

       At some point in time, we need a similar approach to gather more reliable path information such as in the
       paris-traceroute tool.

       Due  to the generic nature of astraceroute, it currently has a built-in mechanism to stop the trace after
       a fixed number of hops, since the configurable TCP flags can have anything included. It  is  possible  to
       decrease this number of course.  In the future, if a SYN probe is sent out, there should be a listener so
       that we can stop the trace if we detect a handshake in progress.

LEGAL

       astraceroute is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2.0.

HISTORY

       astraceroute  was  originally  written  for  the  netsniff-ng toolkit by Daniel Borkmann. It is currently
       maintained by Tobias Klauser <tklauser@distanz.ch> and Daniel Borkmann <dborkma@tik.ee.ethz.ch>.

AUTHOR

       Manpage was written by Daniel Borkmann.

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the Linux netsniff-ng toolkit project. A description of the project, and information
       about reporting bugs, can be found at http://netsniff-ng.org/.

Linux                                             03 March 2013                                  ASTRACEROUTE(8)