Unable to traceroute but Able to ping in Linux behind ClearOS


My friend successfully deploy ClearOS, a Linux flavor, as Firewall and Gateway Server in his network and he face a bit strange problem, he was able to ping any outer network server / website from his Linux or Windows Pc behind Linux ClearOS Firewall but he was only able to tracert from Windows because when he tries to traceroute from his Linux box, all hopes drops.  His working scenario was almost something as under;
We (me & my friend) start analyzing this issue, as I was facing this issue for the 1st time ever. Soon we come to know that by default Linux Traceroute Command work under UDP (User Data Protocol) with destination port numbers from 33434 to 33534 and PING command test the reachability of a host on an IP (Internet Protocol). PING operates by sending ICMP echo request packets to its target. Wrap Up discussions as per Wikipedia “If a network has a firewall and operates both MS Windows and Unix-like systems, both protocols must be enabled inbound through the firewall”. During my search over the internet , I also find it’s partial solution that was also on Wikipedia “The implementations of traceroute shipped with Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Mac OS X include an option to use ICMP Echo packets (-I) or any arbitrary protocol (-P) such as UDP, TCP, ICMP.

We test Traceroute command quickly as,

traceroute –l google.com

Hurrah! It works, but that was required that we must teach every user in our network that please use –l for Traceroute on their Linux box.  With little research, we come to know that in iptables, we must allow traceroute on our ClearOS Firewall.

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