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I'm having trouble with the record route (-R) option of the ping command in Linux. It appears that when I run the command without this option, I am able to receive a response from a range of servers (commercial websites like Google, Yahoo etc. as well as internal servers within my campus network). However when I use the -R option, it gives me 100% packet loss for ALL of these. For example, when I run ping www.google.com.au it behaves as expected, giving responses until I terminate it. But when I run ping -R www.google.com.au, it just waits forever, sending packets but not printing anything on the screen. Then when I terminate it forcefully, it shows something like this: 130 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 128999ms

The same thing happens for all hosts that I try to ping. Also I've tried from a range of machines in different places so it can't be a firewall issue. Can someone tell me why the record route option messes up the ping?

Cheers.

Zainab Abaid
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1 Answers1

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Try traceroute or mtr.

They should both give you what you are after. The -R option is ping is not widely known/supported. 3

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dmourati
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  • Thanks - however I actually need to understand (and demonstrate) the working of the -R option and compare the route it returns with the route returned by a traceroute. It's for an assignment I need to explain to a bunch of students so I really need to know what's happening. So far perhaps the most likely explanation is that the ping packets are getting dropped by some receiver along the way as suspicious? – Zainab Abaid Sep 29 '14 at 05:06
  • Ping something inside your network. – dmourati Sep 29 '14 at 06:19
  • Ah, that works! Thanks. Maybe something immediately outside the network is dropping packets. – Zainab Abaid Sep 29 '14 at 12:26