I don't think it works with Windows tracert output edit: edited my windows traceroute to match the linux format and it works nicely. great tool.
You can now use your windows tracert outputs directly!
Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#32This is pretty sweet, nice job. i dig the mapping visualization.
Much appreciated!
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you mind sharing the link (after removing the data you don't want to share)? I'm using IPInfo's data and each hop IP is the end of a segment so it's normal it doesn't follow your expected topology (to which we can add the limitations of traceroute)
Not much point, really, it only detects one hop correctly the rest is garbage. So all that's left is my home IP address, and that gets placed well over a 100 km from where I actually am. I don't mind :)
I work for IPinfo and we provided the data for the project. I would really appreciate your insight on this.
We run ping and traceroute operations from 1,200 servers across the world to every (within reason) IP address out there. So, we have ping RTT and traceroute data history of these measurements.
Considering the physical network topology does not match the physical network topology, we would love to hear your thoughts.
Unrouted IP addresses do not appear on the internet traffic, and we have limited network data for them.
If you can share your traceroute output and obfuscate as much data as possible, we will be happy to investigate and share feedback.
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#34Hmm, I dont feel like this is a good use of traceroute. Its already kind of nebulous, what with MPLS no-decrement-ttl and tunneling protocols. Add to that geo ip is often fantastically wrong. Especially if the ISP has no need for it for its own troubleshooting. They might not go out of their way to update geoip correctly, relying on the routers hostname for information. Blowing it up to display it on a map and preten…
I work for IPinfo and provided the data for it. The original intention for the project was to identify data center locations. The original idea of the project came from https://stefansundin.github.io/traceroute-mapper/. I reworked it and then OP added a lot of bells and whistles. For my day-to-day work, I still use my version.
I manage approximately 1,200 PoPs that are part of IPinfo's ProbeNet platform, which is used to generate our internet measurement data. We, in turn, use this data to produce the IP geolocation data you utilize. The issue is that the servers we manage can be moved to different locations or not be in the advertised locations. We operate these PoPs across 500 cities.
Whenever the PoP fails to meet certain physical location checks, I run basic diagnostic tests to determine where the server is located and where it is not. Aside from running ping and traceroute operations to the target servers, I can run traceroutes to certain IP addresses whose paths I am familiar with. A traceroute visualizer provides a visual interface, information on the ASN, the geolocation, and the time measurements. This provides an intuitive view of where the server "could not be" located rather than could be located. We use several techniques to run basic diagnostic tests. This traceroute visualizer isn't an official test of IPinfo; it is something I vibe-coded together. There are far better internal tools, such as running ping and traceroutes across all of our ~1,200 servers simultaneously.
It is a network diagnostic tool. I think based on your comment, it is not just a tool, it is more of an abstraction of a tool! But it is somewhat useful I thinkl.
I am happy to hear your thoughts. I manage these servers and we are trying our best to improve our data consistently. So, any ideas or even random thoughts you might have can help us improve.
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#35Neat project! The instant map visualization makes it much easier to grok what's happening on the wire compared to just reading out hops and ping times.
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#36Love it, I'm still often surprised by how long a hop can be. e.g. I'm looking at one from France to Singapore.
If you're looking to trace to something far away when doing a demo we've got servers in ~280 cities around the world so .wonderproxy.com works. e.g. taipei.wonderproxy.com or santiago.wonderproxy.com, berlin, newyork, etc.
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#37Love it, I'm still often surprised by how long a hop can be. e.g. I'm looking at one from France to Singapore. If you're looking to trace to something far away when doing a demo we've got servers in ~280 cities around the world so .wonderproxy.com works. e.g. taipei.wonderproxy.com or santiago.wonderproxy.com, berlin, newyork, etc.
Happy you like it!
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe they already provided "Standard traceroute example", "Flyingroutes example (with protocol breakdown)" and "MTR example (with packet loss and timing statistics)".
But you have to copy those examples from another spot in the post and paste it into the box that is already populated with placeholder information. And for whatever reason, copy and paste on the page is flakey and required several retries on my iPhone running iOS 26.
I added a Load sample button so you can test it easily
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#39Neat project! The instant map visualization makes it much easier to grok what's happening on the wire compared to just reading out hops and ping times.
Thanks!
Re: Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In principle, if you ping from multiple known interfaces and paths, you can infer probable location, with confidence going up with the more known points of reference you have. You can do a little calculation and triangulation based off of latency and responsive known targets traversing the same path as the endpoint you're trying to geolocate, and get a very high confidence result for zip code, city, or maybe even 3-4…
Traceroute isn’t “ping,” it’s exploiting TTL manipulation to generate ICMP unreachables. You could do the long list of things you listed. Has anyone done a high-quality implementation of those things? And checked the results? I’d be interested in seeing that.
Yes, traceroute isn't ping. I was describing how you might get high quality geolocation for ip addresses, which in turn could be used in conjunction with traceroute and other tools to map things with a high degree of confidence, since they were bringing up how bad geolocation usually is.
As far as I know, there aren't any public tools which do what I described - it's a weekend's worth of scripting up a proof of concept (or an hour, with AI) and it'd be questionable for open source. You might run afoul of various regulations around the world, and you'd probably get hate mail and legal challenges trying to host something like it. Github and Sourceforge would probably not be willing to hear out any challenges or takedown requests over it.
All that to say, it's probably too much of a hassle to try to make a big open implementation with it, especially since AI can whip it up fairly trivially and even give you a fancy OSM integrated dashboard for whatever you might want to use it for.