



intarea Working Group                                           L. Zhang
Internet-Draft                                                    Huawei
Intended status: Standards Track                                Z. Zhang
Expires: 2 June 2026                                           Sea Group
                                                                  R. Sun
                                                                 Y. Wang
                                                            Huawei Cloud
                                                        29 November 2025


                          Traceroute Framework
               draft-many-intarea-traceroute-framework-00

Abstract

   This draft introduces the development and latest situation of
   Traceroute, which is beneficial for network operators and users to
   understand the latest capabilities of traceroute, enabling them to
   utilize traceroute effectively.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 2 June 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.










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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  General Traceroute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Traceroute with Interface Information . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Traceroute with Node Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Traceroute with Multi-path Interface Information  . . . . . .   4
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   As described in [RFC2151], Traceroute is a common TCP/IP tool, which
   allos users to learn about the route that packets take from their
   local host to a remote host.  It is often used by network and system
   managers to learn something about the ever-changing structure of the
   Internet.

   Traceroute collects the route's information based on the ICMP Time
   Exceeded Message (TEM).  ICMP TEM has been extended by several RFCs
   and drafts, however, there is no drafts nor RFCs summarize the
   current situation and development of Traceroute.

   This draft introduces the development and latest situation of
   Traceroute, which is beneficial for network operators and users to
   understand the latest capabilities of traceroute, enabling them to
   utilize traceroute effectively.







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1.1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

1.2.  Terminology

   The abbreviations used in this document are:

   ICMP: Internet Control Message Protocol

2.  General Traceroute

   [RFC2151] gives a general description on Traceroute.  The original
   version of Traceroute works by sending a sequence of User Datagram
   Protocol (UDP) datagrams to an invalid port address at the remote
   host.  Using the default settings, three datagrams are sent, each
   with a Time-To-Live (TTL) field value set to one.  The TTL value of 1
   causes the datagram to "timeout" as soon as it hits the first router
   in the path; this router will then respond with an ICMP Time Exceeded
   Message (TEM)[RFC792] indicating that the datagram has expired.
   Another three UDP messages are now sent, each with the TTL value set
   to 2, which causes the second router to return ICMP TEMs.  This
   process continues until the packets actually reach the other
   destination.  Since these datagrams are trying to access an invalid
   port at the destination host, ICMP Destination Unreachable Messages
   are returned indicating an unreachable port; this event signals the
   Traceroute program that it is finished!  The Traceroute program
   displays the round-trip delay associated with each of the attempts.
   (Some implementations of Traceroute use the Record-Route option in IP
   rather than the method described above.)

   The original Traceroute just allows users to get the IP address
   information of the router that packets go through from the source
   address of TEMs.

   However, with the enhancment of ICMP, the Traceroute also can
   provides more richful information.

3.  Traceroute with Interface Information

   [RFC4884] extends the ICMP Time Exceeded Message with a length
   attribute and an Extension Structure, making it more flexiable to
   carry more information by one or more objects.




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   Based on [RFC4884], [RFC5837] defines the Interface Information
   Object to carry the ifIndex, IPv4 address, IPv6 address, name, and
   MTU information.  With this extension, Traceroute is enhanced.  It
   can explicitly identify the following at each node:

   *  the IP interface upon which a datagram arrived

   *  the sub-IP component of an IP interface upon which a datagram
      arrived

   *  the IP interface through which the datagram would have been
      forwarded had it been forwardable

   *  the IP next hop to which the datagram would have been forwarded

4.  Traceroute with Node Name

   Although [RFC5837] extends ICMP to carry the interface information,
   however, for the node along the route, it still can only get the IP
   address information and can't adapt to the case where each node may
   not have a unique IP address.  In order to solve this problem,
   [I-D.ietf-intarea-extended-icmp-nodeid] introduces a ICMP extension
   for Node Identification.  It defines the Node Identification Object,
   which allows providing a unique IP address and/or a textual name for
   the node.

   There are two different pieces of information that can appear in a
   Node Identification Object:

   *  An IP Address Sub-Object MAY be included, containing an address of
      sufficient scope to identify the node within the domain.

   *  A Name Sub-Object MAY be included, containing up to 63 octets of
      the YANG sys:hostname ([RFC7317]) or another appropriate name
      uniquely identifying the node.

   The detailed description on Node Identification Ob can be found in
   Section 3 of [I-D.ietf-intarea-extended-icmp-nodeid].

5.  Traceroute with Multi-path Interface Information

   Although Traceroute has been enhanced a lot, it still have some
   limitations.  On the one hand, it is typically used to collect the
   information of one path, when using Traceroute in a multi-path
   topology (there are multiple paths from the source node to the
   destination node and ECMP, UCMP or other multi-path routing strategy
   is used.), the Traceroute can only get information of one of the
   avaialbe paths once.  It can’t collect all the path’s information



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   from source node to destination node at once.  On the other hand,
   having a next hop and an outgoing interface does not mean that the
   next hop and outgoing interface are reachable, the ARP table or
   Neighbor Cache entry associated with the interface also need to be
   completed and reachable.

   Therefore, [I-D.draft-many-intarea-icmp-mp] extends the ICMP message
   with an Multi-path Interface Information object to carry the egress
   interface, next hop, and the corresponding ARP or ND information of
   each multi-path interface of nodes along the route.

6.  Security Considerations

   This document does not introduce any changes to the existing
   proctols, nor does it introduce new security risks.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2151]  Kessler, G. and S. Shepard, "A Primer On Internet and TCP/
              IP Tools and Utilities", FYI 30, RFC 2151,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2151, June 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2151>.

   [RFC792]   Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5,
              RFC 792, DOI 10.17487/RFC0792, September 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc792>.

   [RFC4884]  Bonica, R., Gan, D., Tappan, D., and C. Pignataro,
              "Extended ICMP to Support Multi-Part Messages", RFC 4884,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4884, April 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4884>.



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   [RFC5837]  Atlas, A., Ed., Bonica, R., Ed., Pignataro, C., Ed., Shen,
              N., and JR. Rivers, "Extending ICMP for Interface and
              Next-Hop Identification", RFC 5837, DOI 10.17487/RFC5837,
              April 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5837>.

   [I-D.ietf-intarea-extended-icmp-nodeid]
              Fenner, B. and R. Thomas, "Adding Extensions to ICMP
              Errors for Originating Node Identification", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-intarea-extended-
              icmp-nodeid-04, 19 August 2025,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-intarea-
              extended-icmp-nodeid-04>.

   [RFC7317]  Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "A YANG Data Model for
              System Management", RFC 7317, DOI 10.17487/RFC7317, August
              2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7317>.

   [I-D.draft-many-intarea-icmp-mp]
              Zhang, L., Zhang, Z., Sun, R., and Y. Wang, "Extending
              ICMP for Multi-path", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-many-intarea-icmp-mp-00, 28 November 2025,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-many-intarea-
              icmp-mp-00>.

Acknowledgements

   TBD

Contributors

   Ranxiao Zhao
   Huawei
   China
   Email: zhaoranxiao@huawei.com


   Haibo Wang
   Huawei
   China
   Email: rainsword.wang@huawei.com


Authors' Addresses

   Li Zhang
   Huawei
   China
   Email: zhangli344@huawei.com



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   Zizhou Zhang
   Sea Group
   Singapore
   Email: zhangzz@sea.com


   Ronghua Sun
   Huawei Cloud
   China
   Email: sunronghua@huawei.com


   Yang Wang
   Huawei Cloud
   China
   Email: sky.wangyang@huawei.com



































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