Ping tool : How to learn some new stuff

Cisco, Linux, Telecom
We always can learn some useful new thing in reading manual. This is what I have done and lear an interesting features by means of ping -R. What we can read in ping(8) on a Linux System : -R Record route. Includes the RECORD_ROUTE option in the ECHO_REQUEST packet and displays the route buffer on returned packets. Note that the IP header is only large enough for nine such routes. Many hosts ignore or discard this option.

It can be really useful such as :

plop:~# traceroute -n 217.169.240.154
traceroute to 217.169.240.154 (217.169.240.154), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  217.169.242.252  0.628 ms  0.845 ms  1.091 ms
 2  217.169.240.105  0.419 ms  0.455 ms  0.490 ms
 3  217.169.240.90  0.802 ms  0.851 ms  0.890 ms
 4  217.169.240.154  11.720 ms * *
plop:~# ping -n -R 217.169.240.154
PING 217.169.240.154 (217.169.240.154) 56(124) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 217.169.240.154: icmp_seq=1 ttl=252 time=12.3 ms
NOP
RR:     217.169.242.220
        217.169.240.106
        217.169.240.89
        217.169.240.153
        217.169.240.154
        217.169.240.114
        217.169.240.85
        217.169.240.105
        217.169.242.252

You can discover by which routers your packet are routed :) In my case, you can see that my packets don’t take the same path.