How to ICMPs and traceroutes in Java

Question

Java does not have primitives for ICMPs and traceroute. How to overcome this? Basically I'm building code that should run in *nix and Windows, and need a piece of code that will run in both platforms.

Answer 1

Here's what I wrote today to "implement" the trace route command in Java. I've only tested in windows but it should work in Linux as well although there are several traceroute tools available for Linux so most likely there need to be some checks for the existence of those programs.

public class NetworkDiagnostics{
  private final String os = System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase();

  public String traceRoute(InetAddress address){
    String route = "";
    try {
        Process traceRt;
        if(os.contains("win")) traceRt = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("tracert " + address.getHostAddress());
        else traceRt = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("traceroute " + address.getHostAddress());

        // read the output from the command
        route = convertStreamToString(traceRt.getInputStream());

        // read any errors from the attempted command
        String errors = convertStreamToString(traceRt.getErrorStream());
        if(errors != "") LOGGER.error(errors);
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
        LOGGER.error("error while performing trace route command", e);
    }

    return route;
}

Answer 2

You'll need the jpcap library (maybe the SourceForge jpcap is working too) and use the ICMPPacket class to implement the desired functionality.

Here is the Java traceroute implementation using the jpcap library .