EssentialsEssentials•Network

What is MTR and how to use WinMTR

This article explains what an MTR is and how to use the program WinMTR to gather network statistics for checking how healthy your connectivity is to the server.

The summary - tl;dr

(M)y(T)race(r)oute - My Traceroute, otherwise known as MTR, basically combines traceroute and ping for an accurate reading of a network’s health. This tool is extremely useful because you can measure where your packets are going before reaching the server. Packets travel between multiple datacenters (PoPs) in many cases to reach their destination. Sometimes, these PoPs can be unstable, causing packet loss on the way to the destination server. With an MTR reading, we can accurately gauge where the packets went missing.

WinMTR is a third-party software used for taking super-easy MTR readings. As the name implies, it’s for Windows.

You can find the download for WinMTR Here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/winmtr/files/latest/download

How to use WinMTR

This section will go over the extremely easy process of using WinMTR to monitor your network health.

  • Getting Started
  1. Visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/winmtr/files/latest/download
  2. Simply Right Click on the .zip file and then click Extract All...
  3. Click the Extract button
  4. Open to the WinMTR_x64 folder
  5. Open WinMTR.exe

It’s that simple! Now all you simply need to do is put your server IP (without the port) in the Host: box then click StartIf that’s a bit confusing, continue to read below for a more detailed explanation. We’ll be using a Physgun Game Server as an example.

  • How to easily use WinMTR (using a Physgun Game Server)
  1. Visit https://gamecp.physgun.com and navigate to the server you wish to monitor
  2. On the side panel click on the IP Address for your server, this will copy the IP to your clipboard Where the IP for your server is located on the navbar
  3. Paste the IP Address into the Host: input on WinMTR (Remove the port and the colon (e.g. 45.62.160.69 :27082 should look like 45.62.160.69)) Removing the port for the WinMTR report
  4. Let this run, while the issue is happening, give it about a minute or until the issue stops, then click Stop
  5. Once it has stopped, you’ll see a bunch of information. We explain this more in depth below, but if you don’t care about how it works, then continue on!
  6. Click Copy Text to clipboard
  7. Paste the text into your ticket along with your IPv4 address, which can be gathered from https://ipv4.icanhazip.com.
mtrwinmtrnetwork diagnostic
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