Wtracert: An optimal timer based traceroute implementation for wireless networks

Traceroute program is extensively used in wired networks to track the route packets take on their way to a destination. However, traceroute is often less effective in wireless networks where broken routes are too common. In this paper, the design of wtracert is presented that employs optimal timeouts to provide a faster implementation of the traditional traceroute. Optimal timeout period of timers is based on exponential weighted moving average (EWMA) of round-trip-times of UDP packets. Our linux based implementation of wtracert shows marked improvement over standard traceroute especially when the target is not reachable.