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?
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.
Yep. Only when direct line of sight have I been successful. And sometimes it still fails for some reason. Like in the same room. Might be the heltecs or something.
Like I can see the signal going out via RTLSDR but then nothing sometimes comes back. Not sure why.
I’ve logged a couple of traceroutes that crossed state lines:
2026-06-23 20:50
2026-06-24 03:28
Skiðblaðnir (CLIENT_BASE) and Ἀργώ (CLIENT_MUTE) are collocated so positive SNR is expected. Likewise the positive SNRs within the greater Muskegon area are explicable. Technically, though, Sheboygan, Muskegon, and Milwaukee are each over the horizon from one another so any signal at all (even with greatly negative SNR) is remarkable. Getting a round-trip twice within 24 hours is outstanding. I believe (and I am unanimous in this) that the high temperature gradient over the cool waters of Lake Michigan causes refraction of the radio waves. Thus, the apparent horizon is much farther out than supposed.
Of course, these conditions are exceptional and successful traceroutes even under such conditions are rare.
Thats awesome! We have done 7 hops to get to the bay area from central CA. But like you said its VERY rare to get it successful. Ive seen meshcore do better, but its more setup for that sort of thing.
The issue is consistency. Since these devices run at max 1W, a “loud” device like an AC, refrigerator, or some lights can cause issues with the LoRa spectrum. Even sometimes in the same room, I see meshtastic stop working 1/10 times. and it goes to 9/10 if its over 500 ft with trees and such in the way. Just some observations.
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