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PRTT

-- Passive Packet Round-Trip Time Calculation

Description

Prtt is a program to passively monitor network latency in real time. Prtt utilizes Libpcap and the TCP handshake process to obtain packet round-trip time measurements. For each TCP connection it sees, it measures the time offset between each SYN and SYN-ACK, thereby obtaining a latency measurement. In this manner, prtt builds a database of known hosts and the latencies between them. The database can then be queried to generate round-trip times not only for each host pair, but also aggregate averages over any subnets or DNS entries. Prtt comes in two pieces: a server and a client. The server runs as a daemon collecting statistics and can be queried either locally or remotely by the client.
For best results, run the prtt server on a network tap that sees a lot of traffic.

Dependencies

Libpcap, GLib 2.0, GThread-2.0

Help Text

./prtt -h
Usage:
  prtt [OPTION...] ACTION [ACTION ARGUMENTS]

Possible actions:
  lookup (SOURCE) (DESTINATION)
	Lookup looks up RTT data for the given source and destination in the server's database.
  list [SOURCE] [DESTINATION]
	List lists all known sources or destinations or a given subset, depending on arguments.
  dump
	Effects a dump of all data in the server's database to a .gz file in the server's working directory.
  stats
	Prints out some server statistics.

  SOURCE and DESTINATION arguments can be given as any of a dotted quad, a dotted quad slash netmask,
  or a DNS name (the last for "lookup" only.
  Examples:	123.456.654.321
		123.456.789.0/24
		www.google.com (lookup only)

Help Options:
  -?, --help                                      Show help options

Application Options:
  -s, --server=(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx | server.com)     prtt server address (defaults to localhost)
  -v, --verbose                                   verbose output

Prtt is the client interface to the prtt server daemon (prttd). Prttd utilizes libpcap
to measure in the background the time offsets between TCP SYN and SYN-ACK packets,
thereby measuring packet round-trip time for a given host pair. It compiles a database
of these measurements which can be queried by the client program with the ability to
aggregate over any subnets or DNS entries.

prtt version 1.0 by Jim Brusstar and Manish Karir
Please direct comments and bug reports to jimbru@umich.edu. More information is available at software.merit.edu.

Author(s)

Jim Brusstar - jimbru [at] umich [dot] edu

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