HP moves Traceroute utility into MPE

HP has moved the industry-standard tracert utility into general release for HP 3000 systems, after an extended beta test period. Tracert is a tool which traces the route of IP traffic through intermediate routers and system network interfaces (IP level devices), identifying the full IP path traveled from the source to the destination system.

HP engineer James Hofmeister explained that the MPE/iX version of tracert sends a packet to the destination system “with a Time-To-Live (TTL) of 1, and then the tracert waits for the next IP level system in-line to reply with a ICMP message specifying TTL exceeded. Tracert then increases the TTL by 1 and resends the same packet, tracking the new IP address reached at each step until the destination system or the max number of hops is reached.”

The software is now included in HP’s General Release NST NS-Transport patch for all supported releases of MPE/iX 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0. No MPE/iX 5.5 support for tracert is planned. HP notes these patches must be installed on both the local and the remote HP 3000 in order for MPE/iX to support Tracert from 3000 to 3000.