In some situations, to help or confirm a diagnosis, our teams may ask you to run an MTR capture. Behind this intimidating name actually lies a very simple tool.
An MTR test analyzes all of the routers located between your connection and a destination host (usually your VPS). This makes it possible to effectively diagnose the path taken by your connection, as well as any problems that may be located outside our network perimeter (there are many intermediaries between your ISP and our datacenter, and the MTR lets you see which intermediaries are present on the connection and check that they are behaving normally).
The MTR test result is a list of routers (usually fewer than ten), along with several pieces of information for each line:
- The packet loss rate, which indicates the percentage of data lost between your connection and that router.
- The last latency (in ms) recorded between you and that router
- The average latency recorded between you and that router
- The maximum latency observed between you and that router
How do I run an MTR test?#
On Windows#
Simply download WinMTR and launch it. In the window that opens, fill in the "Host" field with your server's IP, or the one provided by support. Then let the MTR run for 15 minutes, and send a screenshot to support.
On Linux and MacOS#
The MTR program is available as a CLI (command line) version in most package managers (apt, yum, homebrew, etc). Once installed, simply run the MTR with the command "mtr IP"
The result is then displayed in your console. Simply leave it running in the background for 15 minutes, then take a screenshot to send to support.