Articles on: Troubleshooting

How to submit an MTR

WinMTR is an industry standard tool, used by many hosting providers, along with many game studios for diagnostics. If a user is uncomfortable with this software, the user can scan this software with an Anti-Virus tool such as VirusTotal.

Due to the complexity of the Tempest Network, our team may request customers to provide MTR tests to help identify where a network related issue is occurring for a customer. Due to the limitation of data provided from TraceRoute tests, our team requests MTR results, as these will not only show the route that your connection is taking, but also the best/worse latency, average latency, and packet loss. To perform a WinMTR test and submit the results to our team, you can follow these steps :

Configuring your Tempest Firewall for ICMP

Before an MTR test is able to be performed, you must whitelist ICMP in your Tempest Firewall Manager HERE.

When creating this rule, you can follow this example :

Option	Input	Notes
Rule Name	ICMP Whitelist - Global	This rule can be named whatever you prefer. This is for your own documentation
Source IP	0.0.0.0/0	0.0.0.0/0 is used whenever you are creating a global rule.
Protocol	ICMP
SRC Port	Empty	Leave this empty, as ICMP does not use a port
DST Port	Empty	Leave this empty, as ICMP does not use a port
Action	Allow	This tells the firewall to allow ICMP

An Example of ICMP Whitelist

Please allow up to 45 minutes before performing the MTR test after this whitelist has been created to allow the firewall rule to propagate across the network. If after 45 minutes the rule has not propagated, please check your Operating Systems (on your Tempest service) to see if ICMP is blocked at the system level.

Running the MTR test to your server

To start, users can download WinMTR here. This is an official link for the WinMTR tool. Once this zip file has been downloaded, please extract the folder to either your desktop, or a new folder as wanted.

Next, you will need to navigate to the WinMTR folder you have just extracted to, and the subfolder corresponding to your windows version (32-bit or 64-bit) and run WinMTR.exe. (Almost all modern PCs will be 64-bit.)

Once WinMTR is open, in the "Host" field, you will put the IP of the server. For this example, we will be using 1.1.1.1 as our host.

An example of where the service IP will be input.

Once this field is filled out, click the "Start" button. Allow this test to continue running until the "Sent" and "Recv" columns are over 150 passes.

You will know that the WinMTR test is running correctly, and ICMP is enabled if the bottom result of the test shows the service IP. If the test contains a majority of "No response from host", then the ICMP Whitelist may not have propagated across the network yet.

An example of a WinMTR result with 150 passes.

Once this test is complete, you can stop the test with the "Stop" button.

Next, you will click on the "Export TEXT" button. Save this file with your PUBLIC IP as the File name, to help our team know where this test was ran from. In this example, we will use 12.34.56.78 as the PUBLIC IP.

An example of how to save WinMTR results.

Running the MTR test from your server

Windows Server

If you are using Windows Server, you can follow the same steps as above, to run a WinMTR from your server to the client where the connectivity issue is occurring.

Linux-based Operating Systems

If you are using a Linux-based OS on your Tempest service, you can use the built-in MTR tool contained in most Linux distros. This example will be using Ubuntu.

SSH into your Tempest service, and run the following command :

mtr 1.2.3.4 (This IP is the Public IP of the client that is experiencing the connectivity issues)

Once this test has ran for 150 passes, you can screenshot this page, and attach the image to your ticket along with the MTR from the client to the server.

Providing MTRs in both directions is critical in finding where an issue may be occurring. We do understand that this information may be hard to collect from your users, however this information will help our team be able to quickly identify and rectify issues you may be experiencing.

Submitting your WinMTR results

If you have been instructed to perform an MTR test from the owner of a Tempest service, please provide your MTR results to the owner of the service so that they may provide this information to our team.

Finally, respond to your support ticket and attach the WinMTR results you have just saved. If you have not put your Source IP as the File Name as explained above, please provide this information as well.

By following these steps above, you will be providing our support team with valuable information to help resolve your connection issues, and ensure optimal performance for your Tempest Hosting services.

Updated on: 03/10/2023

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