Mtr on macOS: installation via Homebrew and quick network diagnostics

mtr combines ideas traceroute And ping. The utility simultaneously builds a route to the node and measures delays with losses on each hop. Below are step-by-step instructions for macOS: how to install mtr and get a report suitable for technical support.

What does mtr give

1. You can see where the route “breaks”: on which hop RTT increases or losses appear.
2. You can check different types of traffic: ICMP, TCP SYN and UDP.
3. There is a reporting mode for sending results without screenshots.

Installation on macOS

Step 1: Install Homebrew

Open Terminal and run:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

The system will ask for an administrator password and installation confirmation.

Check that brew is installed:

brew -v

Step 2. Install mtr

Install the package:

brew install mtr

On macOS, mtr binaries are prefixed Homebrew. To call mtr without the full path, copy the executables to a system-wide directory:

sudo cp "$(brew --prefix mtr)"/sbin/mtr /usr/local/bin &&

sudo cp "$(brew --prefix mtr)"/sbin/mtr-packet /usr/local/bin

Note: On Apple Silicon Homebrew lives in /opt/homebrew. Team with $(brew —prefix mtr) will automatically substitute the correct path.

How to run diagnostics

mtr requires raw sockets permission, so use sudo:

sudo mtr

Leave the utility running for at least 1–2 minutes to stabilize the statistics.

What do the fields in the table mean?

• Host — host name or IP.
• Loss% — percentage of lost responses from this hop.
• Snt — how many packets were sent.
• Last / Avrg / Best / Wrst — last, average, minimum and maximum delays in ms.
• StDev — standard deviation of delays.

Useful keys

• -n — display IP without reverse DNS to speed up the test.
• -r — reporting mode, prints the total and exits.
• -c N — how many packets to send, example: -c 100.
• -i X — interval between packets in seconds, default 1.
• -4 or -6 — force IPv4 or IPv6.
• -T — send TCP SYN instead of ICMP (this can be useful if ICMP is cut).
• -u — use UDP packets.

Quick script for technical support

1. We collect a report of 100 packets without reverse DNS:

sudo mtr -r -n -c 100 example.com

1. We see high Loss% or larger Avrg on several neighboring hops — this is a candidate for network degradation. Save the terminal output and attach it to your request.

Frequent Tips

• A message like «Operation not permitted» when starting without sudo — run the command as administrator.
• If mtr «not located», check echo $PATH and the presence of binaries in /usr/local/bin. The copy command from step 2 solves this.

This is enough to quickly localize a network problem on macOS and provide detailed statistics on the route.

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