MTR is a tool that provides a live, continuously updating view of the route between your device and a remote server, revealing not only where your packets travel, but how the performance of each hop changes over time.
Understanding how data travels across the Internet is essential for diagnosing performance issues, especially when problems seem intermittent, inconsistent or impossible to trace. While most people are familiar with tools such as ping and traceroute, there's another tool that combines the strengths of both and offers a far clearer picture of what is happening along a network path: MTR.
MTR ("My TraceRoute" but originally "Matt’s TraceRoute") provides a live, continuously updating view of the route between your device and a remote server. It reveals not only where your packets travel, but how the performance of each hop changes over time. For businesses that rely on stable connectivity, MTR is one of the most useful diagnostic utilities available.
Imagine driving the M25, one of the UK’s busiest motorways. If you only travelled it once on a quiet evening, you might conclude it is smooth and free of delays. But anyone who commutes regularly knows it is prone to congestion, bottlenecks and diversions.
Computer networks behave in much the same way. A single test might make everything appear normal, yet the real picture becomes clear only when you examine conditions over time. This is where MTR excels.
Before understanding MTR, it helps to revisit the limitations of the traditional tools:
Ping measures the round-trip time between you and a destination. It’s useful for spotting high latency or packet loss, but it doesn’t tell you where along the route the problem occurs.
Traceroute shows the path packets take from one point to another, hop by hop. However, it provides only a single snapshot. If the network behaves differently a few seconds later, which is common, the snapshot may not reflect the real issue.
MTR combines both functions, giving you the full route and updating it continuously so you can watch patterns evolve.
MTR sends a steady stream of test packets through each hop of a route and updates the results in real time. This gives you a moving picture of:
With these insights, it becomes much easier to determine whether a problem lies on your local connection, within your provider’s network, or somewhere else entirely.
MTR is available on most platforms, although the method varies slightly:
mtr <hostname>sudo mtr <hostname>
Enter your password when prompted.For best results, allow MTR to run long enough to build a stable picture. Resetting it periodically can help prevent early spikes from skewing the averages.
An MTR report contains several columns, but the key ones are:
Some routers, especially those belonging to large carriers, intentionally deprioritise or ignore ICMP requests (the type of packets MTR uses). This can produce:
This behaviour is normal as long as later hops are unaffected. If the route continues normally after the unusual hop, the router is simply refusing to answer every request while still forwarding traffic correctly.
If packet loss appears at a particular hop and continues for every hop that follows, the problem is likely real. This may point to:
Latency spikes work the same way:
Just as road journeys do not always use the same route in both directions, Internet traffic frequently takes a different path on its way back. If you have access to the destination server, running a return-path MTR provides a fuller and more accurate diagnosis. This is known as a bidirectional test, and it often reveals issues that a single test would miss.
MTR is an indispensable tool for diagnosing connectivity problems because it provides a continuous, detailed, and realistic view of how traffic behaves across a network. For businesses that rely on reliable Internet performance, MTR offers the clarity needed to distinguish between temporary fluctuations and underlying faults.
For more information, visit our home page or contact us with your questions.