What UDP destination port(s) does mtr -u use?

Question

traceroute sends UDP packets to port 33434 (and up) by default.

I assume mtr -u (manual, homepage, github) does the same, but I can't find any documentation or test results to verify the destination port numbers.

Does mtr -u use destination port 33434 and then increment, like traceroute?

Answer 1

TL;DR By default, it starts at 33000 and goes up.

You can observe it if you run a network trace at the same time:

tcpdump -i any -n host 8.8.8.8 &
mtr -u --report -c 1 8.8.8.8
21:21:50.777482 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33000: UDP, length 36
21:21:50.877579 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33001: UDP, length 36
21:21:50.977694 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33002: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.077850 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33003: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.177966 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33004: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.278081 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33005: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.378198 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33006: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.478341 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33007: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.578498 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33008: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.678646 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33009: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.778801 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33010: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.878949 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33011: UDP, length 36
21:21:51.979117 IP [redacted].31507 > 8.8.8.8.33012: UDP, length 36

Here is why in the code.

The source code is at https://github.com/traviscross/mtr

If you analyze it, you observe the different behavior between TCP and UDP during parsing of command line arguments:

    case 'u':
        if (ctl->mtrtype != IPPROTO_ICMP) {
            error(EXIT_FAILURE, 0,
                  "-u , -T and -S are mutually exclusive");
        }
        ctl->mtrtype = IPPROTO_UDP;
        break;
    case 'T':
        if (ctl->mtrtype != IPPROTO_ICMP) {
            error(EXIT_FAILURE, 0,
                  "-u , -T and -S are mutually exclusive");
        }
        if (!ctl->remoteport) {
            ctl->remoteport = 80;
        }
        ctl->mtrtype = IPPROTO_TCP;

So no port is set by default for UDP, where it is 80 by default for TCP.

mtr.h has

#define MinPort 1024
#define MaxPort 65535

but this is misleading, the true stuff happens in ui/net.c.

1. net_send_query calls new_sequence
2. and the results is passed among other things to send_probe_command
3. new_sequence in this file has static int next_sequence = MinSequence;

Now, after a lot of hops you arrive in set_udp_ports which has:

    if (param->dest_port) {
...
    } else {
        udp->dstport = htons(sequence);

In short, the "sequence" number is really the UDP destination port.

And if we go back at ui/net.c we see it is defined as:

#define MinSequence 33000
#define MaxSequence 65536