### WhatRoute Help

## Overview

WhatRoute is a network testing/monitoring utility for macOS. It can perform simple network tests such as traceroute and ping in addition to providing flow and bandwidth monitoring.

WhatRoute uses the IP Geolocation engine at http://ip-api.com to associate geographical data with IP addresses.

### Privileged Helper Tool

WhatRoute uses a privileged helper tool to perform operations requiring elevated privileges.

### Basic Network Functions

Trace
Discover routers between your computer and a remote computer.

Ping
Check the round trip time and reachability to another computer.

Whois
Lookup the DNS whois databases to determine ownership, contact details etc for a domain or network using the system whois command

Lookup
Perform DNS queries with the system host and dig commands.

ASN
Autonomous system information.

Port Scan
Find the open tcp and udp ports on a remote computer.

Interfaces
Find information about the interface configuration on your computer using the system ifconfig command.

Netstat
Use the system command, netstat, to provide information about open ports and connections on your computer.

Net Scan
Send a ping request to each IP address in a subnet and record the identity of each computer that replies.

Neighbours
Find the computers on your LAN with which your computer has had recent communications.

Location
Find the physical location of a network (IP address) or computer.

Tcpdump
Run the system tcpdump utility. A text input pane can be used to provide options and filter expressions to the command. tcpdump is started by WhatRoute as a privileged process but drops privilege once it has acquired access to a network interface.

Net Quality
Run the system networkQuality utility. This is only available on macOS 12 Monterey or later.

MAC Address
Look up the registration details for the given MAC address.

### Mapping

WhatRoute can display network nodes on a map of the planet. Each node is surrounded by a circle showing the accuracy with which the location has been estimated.

The nodes can be connected by a series of curves that show the flow of data betweeen the nodes.

More detailed information can be displayed on a higher resolution map by clicking on the node.

### Flow Monitor

The Flow Monitor table displays the network flows seen by the selected network interface.

A Network Flow is a summary of the packets seen on a network interface with common characteristics of source/destination IP addresses, network protocol and source/destination ports.

WhatRoute enables you to view other detail such as the amount of data associated with the flow, the process on your machine that is participating in the flow etc.

### Flow Treemap

The Flow Treemap window displays the contents of Flow Monitor as a treemap.

This is useful for spotting flows using an excessive amount of network resource.

### Local Network

The Local Network window displays other hosts on your network and will also show the contents of Flow Monitor as flows between local network hosts or the default network gateway.

This is useful for spotting flows using an excessive amount of network resource.

### Bandwidth Monitor

The Bandwidth Monitor window shows a graph of the amount of data received/sent by a specific network interface.

### WiFi Monitor

View performance attributes of your WiFi network.

### DNS Server Performance

Test the time taken to resolve from many dns servers.

Copyright © 2016-2026 B.R. Christianson (bryan@whatroute.net)