Use ping and traceroute on a packet core instance

Article
11/06/2023

Azure Private 5G Core supports the standard ping and traceroute diagnostic tools, enhanced with an option to select a specific network interface. You can use ping and traceroute to help diagnose network connectivity problems. In this how-to guide, you'll learn how to use ping and traceroute to check connectivity to the access or data networks over the user plane interfaces on your device.

Prerequisites

Identify the Kubernetes - Azure Arc resource representing the Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster on which your packet core instance is running.
Ensure your local machine has core kubectl access to the Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster. This requires a core kubeconfig file, which you can obtain by following Set up kubectl access.

Choose the IP address to test

You can use the ping and traceroute tools to check the reachability of any IP address over the specified interface. A common example is the default gateway. If you don't know the default gateway address for the interface you want to test, you can find it on the Advanced Networking blade on the Azure Stack Edge (ASE) local UI.

To access the local UI, see Tutorial: Connect to Azure Stack Edge Pro with GPU.

Run the ping and traceroute tools

In a command line with kubectl access to the Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster, enter the MEC-DP troubleshooter pod:
```
kubectl exec -it -n core core-mec-dp-0 -c troubleshooter -- bash
```
View the list of configured user plane interfaces:
```
mect list
```
This should report a single interface on the control plane network (N2), a single interface on the access network (N3) and an interface for each attached data network (N6). For example:
```
n2trace
n3trace
n6trace0 (Data Network: internet)
n6trace1 (Data Network: enterprise)
n6trace2 (Data Network: test)
```
Run the ping command, specifying the network and IP address to test. You can specify access for the access network or the network name for a data network.
```
ping --net <network name> <IP address>
```
For example:
```
ping --net enterprise 10.0.0.1
```
The tool should report a list of packets transmitted and received with 0% packet loss.
Run the traceroute command, specifying the network and IP address to test. You can specify access for the access network or the network name for a data network.
```
traceroute --net <network name> <IP address>
```
For example:
```
traceroute --net enterprise 10.0.0.1
```
The tool should report a series of hops, with the specified IP address as the final hop.

Next steps

For more detailed diagnostics, you can Perform data plane packet capture on a packet core instance
If you have found identified a connectivity issue and don't know how to resolve it, you can Get support for your Azure Private 5G Core service

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