Implementing Traceroute with System.Net - Part III

In the previous part http://ferozedaud.blogspot.com/2009/09/implementing-traceroute-with-systemnet_07.html I showed a simple implementation of traceroute, that built upon my earlier implementation of Ping.

As promised, in this article, we will see how to make the utility more robust.

One of the things I didnt like about the previous implementation, was that there was no verification of the received request packet. The implementation was not verifying whether the type of the response was correct - an ICMP Echo request should elicit an ICMP Echo response (see the ICMP RFC at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0792.txt)

So, we add the code for verifying that. According to the RFC, the Echo reply message has a Type Field = 0. Also, since we are using the TTL mechanism for detecting hosts along the route to the destination, we expect that every host but the final one, will reply with a ICMP Time Exceeded message, which has a Message Type = 11.

Also, the other issue with the tool, is that it does not resolve the IPAddress of the intermediate hosts. In a traceroute output, we are mostly interested in the hostnames of the intermediate routers, and not just the IP address. So, we will add that capability as well.

With these changes, here is the changed code. I have only put the changes to the while(true) loop in my original implementation.

while (true)
{
Console.Write("{0}", hop);
bool allTimedOut = true;
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
{
ICMP_PACKET packet = ICMP_PACKET.CreateRequestPacket(111, 222, data);

IPEndPoint epRemote = new IPEndPoint(ipTarget, 0);

pingSocket.SetSocketOption(SocketOptionLevel.IP, SocketOptionName.IpTimeToLive, hop);


stopWatch.Start();
pingSocket.SendTo(packet.Serialize(), epRemote);



byte[] receiveData = new byte[1024];
int read = 0;
try
{
epResponse = new IPEndPoint(0, 0);
read = pingSocket.ReceiveFrom(receiveData, ref epResponse);
stopWatch.Stop();

ICMP_PACKET recvPacket = new ICMP_PACKET(receiveData, 20, read);

ipepResponse = epResponse as IPEndPoint;

if (recvPacket.PacketType == 11)
{
// this is an ICMP Time exceeded message
if (ipepResponse.Address.Equals(ipTarget))
{
// do not expect an ICMP Time Exceeded message from the
// final destination.
Console.Error.Write("\t!!");
}
}
else if (recvPacket.PacketType == 0)
{
// this is an ICMP Echo reply message
// validate that this is coming from the destination host.
if (!ipepResponse.Address.Equals(ipTarget))
{
// do not expect an ICMP Time Exceeded message from the
// final destination.
Console.Error.Write("\t!!");
}
}

Console.Write("\t<<{0}ms", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
allTimedOut = false;
}
catch (SocketException e)
{
Console.Write("\t*");
}
}

if (allTimedOut)
{
Console.WriteLine("\tRequest timed out");
}
else
{
String intermediateHost = null;
// now try to resolve the IPAddress
try
{
IPHostEntry hostEntry = Dns.GetHostEntry(ipepResponse.Address);
intermediateHost = hostEntry.HostName;
}
catch (SocketException e)
{
}

Console.WriteLine("\t{0} {1}", ((IPEndPoint)epResponse).Address.ToString(), intermediateHost);

}
++hop;

ipepResponse = epResponse as IPEndPoint;
if (hop > maxHops || ipepResponse.Address.Equals(ipTarget))
{
break;
}
}

In the next part, I will throw some ideas out there, on how this can be extended even more.