Tracebox is a tool that allows to detect middleboxes on any paths, i.e., between a source and any destination. Tracebox can be viewed as a tool similar to traceroute as it uses ICMP replies to identify changes in the packets. The fact that tracebox is able to detect middleboxes comes from the observation that ICMP messages are often not as defined in RFC792. Indeed it is quite common to receive a ICMP Time-to-Live exceeded message with the original datagram instead of 64 bits as described in the standard. This is caused by operating systems configured to reply with full ICMP (e.g., Linux, Cisco IOS-XR, etc.) as well as the ICMP Multi-Part Messages extension that standardize the fact that routers using MPLS tunnels replies and ICMP message containing the full datagram.
brew install tracebox
Requirements: autotools, automake, libtool, liblua-dev, libpcap-dev, libjson0, libjson0-dev
To build:
$ ./bootstrap.sh
$ ./configure [--prefix=install_prefix [--enable-tests]]
$ make
# make install
The package is available at http://github.com/tracebox/openwrt. Inside the OpenWRT SDK:
$ echo "src-git tracebox git://github.com/tracebox/openwrt.git" >> feeds.conf.default
$ ./scripts/feeds install -a tracebox
$ make menuconfig # select tracebox in "Network"
$ make package/tracebox/compile # should generate a package in bin/<target>/packages/tracebox_*.ipk
The Lua API is (should) be documented and is available at http://tracebox.org/lua_doc. It can be generated using LDoc from the root directory (see config.ld):
$ ldoc .
The documentation should be created under doc/
To change the output format of Tracebox to JSOn format, use the j option.
Output format:
{
"addr": IP of the destination,
"name": Name of the destination [Optionnal],
"max_hops": Number of maximum hops,
"Hops": [
Array containing each hop information
{
"hop": Number of the hop,
"from": IP of the hop,
"name": Name of the hop [Optionnal],
"Modifications": [
Two possibilities depending on the verbose mode
if verbose:
Array containing each modification
{
Name of the modification: {
"Expected": Value injected,
"Received": Value receveid
}
}
else:
Array containing just the name of the modification
],
"Aditions": [
Two possibilities depending on the verbose mode
if verbose:
Array containing each modification
{
Name of the modification: {
"Info": Information added
}
}
else:
Array containing just the name of the field(s) added
],
"Deletions": [
Two possibilities depending on the verbose mode
if verbose:
Array containing each modification
{
Name of the modification: {
"Info": Information deleted
}
}
else:
Array containing just the name of the field(s) deleted
],
"ICMPExtension": [Optionnal] [
Two possibilities depending on the verbose mode
if verbose:
Array containing each modification
{
Name of the extension: {
"Info": Information of the extension
}
}
else:
Array containing just the name of the extension(s)
]
}
]
}