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. Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 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. Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 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. Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 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 Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 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, . [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . 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, . [RFC792] Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5, RFC 792, DOI 10.17487/RFC0792, September 1981, . [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, . Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 [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, . [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, . [RFC7317] Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "A YANG Data Model for System Management", RFC 7317, DOI 10.17487/RFC7317, August 2014, . [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, . 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 Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Traceroute Framework November 2025 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 Zhang, et al. Expires 2 June 2026 [Page 7]