Difference between "traceroute" and "traceroute -U"
- by AndiDog
The manpage of traceroute says that the "-U" parameter (UDP probing) is the default, but I'm getting different results every time.
With "-U":
traceroute -U www.univ-paris1.fr
traceroute to www.univ-paris1.fr (193.55.96.121), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
[...]
13 rap-vl165-te3-2-jussieu-rtr-021.noc.renater.fr (193.51.181.101) 59.445 ms 56.924 ms 56.651 ms
[...]
18 * paris1web.univ-paris1.fr (193.55.96.121) 23.797 ms 23.603 ms
but the normal traceroute gives me another result (never reaches the final node) - it's either "!X" or just exits after the maximum of 30 hops:
traceroute www.univ-paris1.fr
traceroute to www.univ-paris1.fr (193.55.96.121), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
[...]
11 te1-1-paris1-rtr-021.noc.renater.fr (193.51.189.38) 28.147 ms 28.250 ms 28.538 ms
[... non-responding nodes ...]
28 site-1.03-jussieu.rap.prd.fr (195.221.126.58) 85.941 ms !X * *
Note: I tried this very often and always get the same results. The path in my local network is always the same.
So what does the "-U" parameter actually change here? I'm especially interested what the reason for "!X" could be (communication administratively prohibited).
EDIT: If that helps, paris-traceroute gives me the following for the last hop:
14 P(1, 6) site-1.03-jussieu.rap.prd.fr (195.221.126.58) 34.938 ms !5 !T2
which means that node discards the packet with TTL=2 and returns an unknown message (not "destination unreachable" or the like).
