Some times it is important to know if a route to a specific target changed. The best way to check this is for sure to engage a monitoring software. But there might not be a real standard solution in the monitoring software. Now you end up wondering how should you approach this and find a solution to monitor a traceroute result and the hops between you and the target and find out if something changed.
For this exact case I wrote a PowerShell script that expects the following two parameter:
- a target IP address or DNS name
- a list of IP addresses in order as they should come up in the traceroute (comma separated)
- include the target IP address as a final HOP
The script then will execute a tracert or traceroute to the target and compare the results step by step against the IP address list you injected. If a HOP is different at a certain position from what was expected an error will be reported back which IP was found and which was expected.
If there are no differences as for the injected IP list, it still could be the case that the traceroute to the target was e.g. longer or shorter – if there then is a difference in the HOP count between the actual traceroute results and the injected IP address list you still will get an error raised and a report back on the amount of found hops and expected hops.
Since the whole output is optimized to be processed by Paessler’s PRTG you also get an error from the sensor / script when the target was not reachable.
Additionally some information on the round-trip-time (RTT) and total HOPs is reported back to the sensor, ending up in a total of four channels:
- Target reached
- Round Trip Time
- Total HOPs
- Route matches expected route
As of September 2020 there are two versions of this script. First see the original script, after this I detail out the second version, see further below please.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 | param( [string]$Target, [string]$ExpectedRoute ) $ER = $ExpectedRoute.Split(","); $Trace=TNC $Target -TraceRoute; $Count=[string]$Trace.TraceRoute.Count; $Message = ""; $asexpected = 1; [int]$i = 0; ForEach ($IP in $Trace.TraceRoute) { If ($i -lt $ER.Length){ If ($IP.Trim() -ne $ER[$i].Trim()) { $Message = "Route change at HOP #" + ($i + 1).ToString() + " - IP expected: " + $ER[$i] + " - IP found: $IP"; $asexpected = 0; break; } } $i += 1; } If ($Trace.TraceRoute.Count -ne $ER.Length) { If ($asexpected -eq 1) { $Message = "Route changed - expected HOP count: " + $ER.Length + " - detected HOP count: " + $Trace.TraceRoute.Count; $asexpected = 1; } } $reached = 0; If ($Trace.PingSucceeded) { $reached = 1; } $XML = "<prtg> <result> <channel>Target reached</channel> <value>$reached</value> <LimitMode>1</LimitMode> <LimitMinError>1</LimitMinError> </result> <result> <channel>Round Trip Time</channel> <value>" + $Trace.PingReplyDetails.RoundtripTime + "</value> </result> <result> <channel>Total HOPs</channel> <value>" + $Trace.TraceRoute.Count + "</value> </result> <result> <channel>Route matches expected route</channel> <value>$asexpected</value> <LimitMode>1</LimitMode> <LimitMinError>1</LimitMinError> <LimitErrorMsg>$Message</LimitErrorMsg> </result> </prtg>" Function WriteXmlToScreen ([xml]$xml) #just to make it clean XML code... { $StringWriter = New-Object System.IO.StringWriter; $XmlWriter = New-Object System.Xml.XmlTextWriter $StringWriter; $XmlWriter.Formatting = "indented"; $xml.WriteTo($XmlWriter); $XmlWriter.Flush(); $StringWriter.Flush(); Write-Output $StringWriter.ToString(); } WriteXmlToScreen "$XML" |
As mentioned further above, after a request in September 2020 in the Paessler KB a version 2 of the script was created. This version includes a third needed parameter – Expected IP address. This also introduces a new channel, that will indicate if the expected IP was found or not (error status).
This can possibly help, as the requestor stated, to determine if route still goes over a primary gateway or a backup gateway. Sometimes you a route might change further below, but a certain router needs to be active. You could also easily change the expected IP behavior to not expected IP behavior, by changing the $ExpectedIPFound value in line 33 to 1 and in line 36 to 0. This will invert the script behavior for this function and therefor only alert (indicate) IF this IP suddenly appears on the route, besides the fact that the route will have changed anyways.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 | param( [string]$Target, [string]$ExpectedRoute, [string]$ExpectedIP ) $ER = $ExpectedRoute.Split(","); $Trace=TNC $Target -TraceRoute; $Count=[string]$Trace.TraceRoute.Count; $Message = ""; $asexpected = 1; [int]$i = 0; ForEach ($IP in $Trace.TraceRoute) { If ($i -lt $ER.Length){ If ($IP.Trim() -ne $ER[$i].Trim()) { $Message = "Route change at HOP #" + ($i + 1).ToString() + " - IP expected: " + $ER[$i] + " - IP found: $IP"; $asexpected = 0; break; } } $i += 1; } If ($Trace.TraceRoute.Count -ne $ER.Length) { If ($asexpected -eq 1) { $Message = "Route changed - expected HOP count: " + $ER.Length + " - detected HOP count: " + $Trace.TraceRoute.Count; $asexpected = 1; } } $ExpectedIPFound = 0 ForEach ($IP in $Trace.TraceRoute) { If ($IP.Trim() -eq $ExpectedIP.Trim()) { $ExpectedIPFound = 1; break; } } $reached = 0; If ($Trace.PingSucceeded) { $reached = 1; } $XML = "<prtg> <result> <channel>Target reached</channel> <value>$reached</value> <LimitMode>1</LimitMode> <LimitMinError>1</LimitMinError> </result> <result> <channel>Round Trip Time</channel> <value>" + $Trace.PingReplyDetails.RoundtripTime + "</value> </result> <result> <channel>Total HOPs</channel> <value>" + $Trace.TraceRoute.Count + "</value> </result> <result> <channel>Expected IP Found</channel> <value>$ExpectedIPFound</value> <LimitMode>1</LimitMode> <LimitMinError>1</LimitMinError> </result> <result> <channel>Route matches expected route</channel> <value>$asexpected</value> <LimitMode>1</LimitMode> <LimitMinError>1</LimitMinError> <LimitErrorMsg>$Message</LimitErrorMsg> </result> <text>$Message</text> </prtg>" Function WriteXmlToScreen ([xml]$xml) #just to make it clean XML code... { $StringWriter = New-Object System.IO.StringWriter; $XmlWriter = New-Object System.Xml.XmlTextWriter $StringWriter; $XmlWriter.Formatting = "indented"; $xml.WriteTo($XmlWriter); $XmlWriter.Flush(); $StringWriter.Flush(); Write-Output $StringWriter.ToString(); } WriteXmlToScreen "$XML" |