I’ve been trying to use it in my area to get a better idea of what path my packets are taking through the local mesh from different locations, seeing what links are weak and where another repeater might be useful.
But I swear it NEVER works. If there is more than a single hop in between me and my target node (whether it’s one I own or not), I never ever get a response. Nodes will be sending me power/environment information actively, and I get it A-OK, but when I try to traceroute-nada.
Once, i mean ONCE, I got a 2-hop response. And I run all my nodes at 7hop TTL since it’s very low traffic around here, so it’s not that.
My local mesh is not super dense or all that reliable, but messages still go through about 80-90% of the time, so why is the Traceroute module so bad? Is it just that much worse at handling packet failures compared to the message routine?
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Based on my experience only: Traceroute works, but only if there is SOLID communication over all hops in the path. I can traceroute through known good paths, but anything marginal and it fails.
Ok, that seems to track then. When I do get my single 2-hop return it’s through a link with SNR under -10, so that is probably just not stable enough for the traceroute. Frustrating for sure.
Guess i’ll spend another couple hundred on some additional hardware and start coating the hillsides with them lmao
I had similar issues with Meshtastic’s traceroute. Have you tried Meshcore? The design is a bit different in that it keeps the client nodes and repeaters separate, and repeaters are meant to be kept in more stable positions. I bring it up because in Meshcore you can manually select specific pathways to probe and analyze hops in greater detail. If there is an active Meshcore network in your area you might want to give it a try. It runs on the same hardware, so you can flip between systems, but the meshes cannot interact.
Meshcore is partially proprietary which makes no longer an option for me personally
Oh, is it? I didn’t know. What part is?
The mobile apps I believe
Meshcore-open fixes this. I am an open source maximalist and would not touch meshcore until there was a mobile app that was not proprietary.
The Lora radio in these devices is not open source.
I’ve considered Meshcore. There is no Meshcore infrastructure in my area though, and Meshcore is also not ideal for my use case (which is going to involve a lot of mobile GPS tracker use in forest areas without infrastructure nodes, somewhere meshtastic shines a lot brighter).
I’m mostly just peeved that Meshtastic’s built in tools don’t work very well lol.
Meshcore does now have client repeat mode which lets companions repeat like they do in meshtastic, but it does stick you on to a different frequency so that you don’t mess with the regular mesh.
Have a look at client repeat mode. May be worth a try. https://blog.meshcore.io/2026/02/13/off-grid-client-repeat-mode
Traceroute uses ICMP echo requests (“pings”), and a lot of public routers have been blocking them since like 7-8 years.
I’m talking about Meshtastic, decentralized P2P messaging using LoRa radio devices. Not the internet.
Lost Lemming moment
this was my though. people are talking about the quality of the networks and stuff and im thinking. I thought places blocked it so you generally would see you local stuff and then stars and once in awhile backbone things that sorta can’t block it because they are to important.
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