Newer versions of traceroute have limited functionality

Running traceroute 1.9.4 on 8.8.8.8 shows

traceroute -m 30 -q 1 -w 3 -A 8.8.8.8
traceroute: invalid option -- 'A'
Try 'traceroute --help' or 'traceroute --usage' for more information.

However the same command from the stanford website shows a lot more information

Executing exec(traceroute -m 30 -q 1 -w 3 -A 1.1.1.1)
traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 30 hops max, 140 byte packets 1 rtr-servcore1-serv01-webserv.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.197.130) [AS3671] 0.725 ms 2 rtr-core2-p2p-serv01-02.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.253.253) [AS3671] 0.665 ms 3 rtr-fwcore2-trust-p2p-core2.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.254.146) [AS3671] 1.444 ms 4 rtr-core1-p2p-fwcore1-untrust.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.254.137) [AS3671] 1.402 ms 5 * 6 sunncr5-ip-c-slac.slac.stanford.edu (192.68.191.233) [AS3671] 2.225 ms 7 eqxsjcr5-ip-a-sunncr5.es.net (134.55.38.146) [AS293] 2.215 ms 8 198.129.44.54 (198.129.44.54) [AS292] 2.179 ms 9 if-ae-1-2.tcore1.SQN-San-Jose.as6453.net (63.243.205.1) [AS6453] 252.809 ms
10 if-ae-12-2.tcore1.NTO-New-York.as6453.net (63.243.128.28) [AS6453] 252.866 ms
11 if-ae-7-2.tcore1.N0V-New-York.as6453.net (63.243.128.26) [AS6453] 252.106 ms
12 if-ae-2-2.tcore2.N0V-New-York.as6453.net (216.6.90.22) [AS6453] 251.617 ms
13 if-ae-4-2.tcore2.L78-London.as6453.net (80.231.131.157) [AS6453] 252.372 ms
14 if-ae-9-2.tcore2.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net (80.231.200.13) [AS6453] 248.352 ms
15 if-ae-2-2.tcore1.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net (80.231.217.1) [AS6453] 161.635 ms
16 if-ge-2-0-0.core1.N71-Fujairah.as6453.net (195.219.174.26) [AS6453] 252.793 ms
17 195.219.174.18 (195.219.174.18) [AS6453] 301.176 ms

Is it that older versions of traceroute had more functionality? I'm running traceroute on Ubuntu 17.04 installed from the inetutils package.

How do I get the actually useful version of traceroute?

I would like to especially be able to get an ip address provider's AS number

EDIT:

Here's Usage from my local install

jonathan@ubuntu ~> traceroute --usage
Usage: traceroute [-I?V] [-f NUM] [-g GATES] [-m NUM] [-M METHOD] [-p PORT] [-q NUM] [-t NUM] [-w NUM] [--first-hop=NUM] [--gateways=GATES] [--icmp] [--max-hop=NUM] [--type=METHOD] [--port=PORT] [--tries=NUM] [--resolve-hostnames] [--tos=NUM] [--wait=NUM] [--help] [--usage] [--version] HOST

1 Answer

traceroute has a -A option in Ubuntu. The manual page for traceroute 17.04 says:

 SYNOPSIS traceroute [-46dFITUnreAV] [-f first_ttl] [-g gate,...] [-i device] [-m max_ttl] [-p port] [-s src_addr] [-q nqueries] [-N squeries] [-t tos] [-l flow_label] [-w waittime] [-z sendwait] [-UL] [-D] [-P proto] [--sport=port] [-M method] [-O mod_options] [--mtu] [--back] host [packet_len] traceroute6 [options] tcptraceroute [options] lft [options]

and

 -A Perform AS path lookups in routing registries and print results directly after the corresponding addresses.

It would be pretty odd to remove functionality from commands.

Make sure you TYPE it and do not copy/paste from the web. The - might not be a -.

My system (17.04) shows this:

~$ traceroute -A 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
... 5 te0-0-0-1-tc1-br1.router.nl.clara.net (212.61.142.218) [AS8426] 8.755 ms 9.239 ms 9.588 ms 6 core2.ams.net.google.com (80.249.209.100) [AS1200] 10.104 ms 4.409 ms 5.527 ms

So it is the normal one. I removed the first 4 due to the nameservers.