TraceRoute GeoLocation Utility

Introduction

TraceRoute GeoLocation Utility is a GUI program to run traceroute program and plotting the routing map via GNUPlot. The IP WHOIS information source is from IPWHOIS. The program is written by Tcl language.

Requirements

Tcl

Tk

Tcllib

The current code is tested and passed in the following environment:

• Operating System: Fedora 34 - Linux
• Tcl: tcl-8.6.10-5
• TclLib: tcllib-1.19-6
• Tk: tk-8.6.10-6
• traceroute: 2.1.0
• GNUPlot: 5.2 patchlevel 8

Usage

Before running this utility, user needs to check following variables in traceroute-geolocation.tcl to make sure traceroute / gnuplot binaries are pointing to correct paths. Also, to plot the routing map, it needs to use a world map data points file from GNUPlot. The file can be downloaded here.

Here are default variables settings:

# define initial variables
set traceroute_bin "/usr/bin/traceroute"
set gnuplot_bin "/usr/bin/gnuplot"
set world_map_data "/usr/share/doc/gnuplot-doc/demo/world.dat"
set traceroute_geolocation_gnuplot "traceroute-geolocation.gnuplot"

The input blank can accept both IPv4 address and FQDN hostname. It does not support multiple entries. I didn't test IPv6 address yet, it's up to the compatibility of traceroute.

It's very normal that ISP routers use ICMP protocol rate-limiting to reduce ingress traffic. If traceroute encounters timeout, the utility will print a TIMEOUT message in the whole row.

If due to the IP range or other reasons the IPWHOIS API could not get correct information, the utility will print a API ERROR in the whole row.

Once the whole TraceRoute process is done, a geolocation data points file will be created under user's home directory.

The file traceroute-geolocation.gnuplot is a GNUPlot script to generate graphs. By default, it will create 2 images in PNG and SVG formats with 1280x960 size under user's home directory. I suggest user puts traceroute-geolocation.tcl and traceroute-geolocation.gnuplot in the same directory.

Known Issues

1. I am using a lightweight solution to plot worldmap so it may seem very ugly. If I can find any other local and open sourced map solution I would improve this part without any doubt. Please bear with me.
2. I didn't implement the image shrinking feature yet when displaying the routing map. It's a bit difficult but I would add this feature in a future version.

Screenshots

Routing Map to My University

TODO

1. Add image shrinking feature when displaying map.