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How can I tell if I am connecting via London or Manchester?
So, generally Zen have locked down the randomness in your gateway assignment. So if cityfibre is routing you via Manchester you will connect to a Manchester BNG and if via London you will get onto a London BNG.
Do a traceroute somewhere. I use 8.8.8.8 (google DNS) but you can also use 1.1.1.1 or literally anywhere.
The very first hop after your home router (the hostname will contain "bng") will be your gateway.
London example:
| Text | 1
23
45
67
| traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.178.253) 0.093 ms 0.106 ms 0.164 ms 2 lo0-0.bng4.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.77.132) 6.327 ms 6.298 ms 6.314 ms
3 lag-14.p2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.96) 4.118 ms 4.134 ms lag-14.p1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.94) 4.072 ms 4 72.14.223.28 (72.14.223.28) 3.530 ms 72.14.217.190 (72.14.217.190) 5.194 ms 72.14.223.28 (72.14.223.28) 3.493 ms
5 * 192.178.97.115 (192.178.97.115) 5.197 ms 192.178.97.49 (192.178.97.49) 4.600 ms 6 dns.google (8.8.8.8) 4.024 ms 4.452 ms 4.447 ms |
In this case you can see it is BNG4, and right after that you can see thn-lon. Which means telehouse north (I believe) in London. So you're looking for the "lon"
Manchester example:
| Text | 1
23
45
67
| traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.178.253) 0.104 ms 0.121 ms 0.113 ms 2 lo0-0.bng4.wh-man.zen.net.uk (51.148.77.131) 11.466 ms 11.432 ms 11.453 ms
3 lag-8.p2.wh-man.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.118) 12.699 ms 13.460 ms 13.429 ms 4 be26.p1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.244.49) 13.340 ms 13.356 ms *
5 192.178.97.189 (192.178.97.189) 13.378 ms 13.395 ms 192.178.98.1 (192.178.98.1) 13.925 ms 6 172.253.66.101 (172.253.66.101) 13.991 ms 142.251.52.143 (142.251.52.143) 13.209 ms dns.google (8.8.8.8) 11.882 ms |
Here you can see this in BNG4 with wh-man. The man denoting Manchester.
Unlike the FTTC network, even if you get a different BNG (it's much harder to do now it's ALWAYS manchester for me now), it doesn't seem to change your physical route. The traffic for me still goes via manchester even when on the telehouse one (except for those magic 10 minutes last night).
Edited by agent_r00t (Tue 25-Feb-25 13:28:14)
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Do a traceroute somewhere. I use 8.8.8.8 (google DNS) but you can also use 1.1.1.1 or literally anywhere.
Thanks - looks like I am correctly on London:
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 fritz.box (192.168.178.1) 0.475 ms 0.598 ms 0.680 ms
2 lo0-0.bng5.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.77.133) 20.579 ms 20.610 ms 20.649 ms
3 lag-15.p2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.100) 7.286 ms * 7.893 ms
4 72.14.217.190 (72.14.217.190) 11.233 ms 72.14.223.28 (72.14.223.28) 11.163 ms *
5 192.178.97.49 (192.178.97.49) 11.295 ms 192.178.97.189 (192.178.97.189) 11.239 ms 192.178.97.49 (192.178.97.49) 11.344 ms
6 142.251.52.143 (142.251.52.143) 11.386 ms 192.178.46.87 (192.178.46.87) 6.153 ms dns.google (8.8.8.8) 5.976 ms
Is there any way to tell which CityFibre exchange I am connected to?
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Is there any way to tell which CityFibre exchange I am connected to?
Not digitally that I am aware of. But I believe the exchange name is stamped on some of the green boxes. The one I am connected to doesn't have it on but there's one on the main road that does.
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How can I tell if I am connecting via London or Manchester?
Run trace route (tracert in Windows-speak) in a terminal window.
Also, does anyone know where, (which town), CityFibre's exchange for the Milton Keynes area is please?
No idea.
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How can I tell if I am connecting via London or Manchester?
So, generally Zen have locked down the randomness in your gateway assignment. So if cityfibre is routing you via Manchester you will connect to a Manchester BNG and if via London you will get onto a London BNG.
I said it last year and I'll say it again. With Zen CityFibre don't route you anywhere. Zen only take the local products from CityFibre, which means you connect to the Zen network straight off the back of your local CityFibre exchange. Normally that is where your OLT is located so very close to where you live.
Any routing is down to how Zen have connected from that city back into their network. Zen use PPP so the first hop you see is their BNG, there could be many hops between the local Zen device in your city and their BNGs.
In MK65's case their connection will be from a CityFibre exchange within Milton Keynes, I think they have more than one to cover the whole of the city.
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Any routing is down to how Zen have connected from that city back into their network. Zen use PPP so the first hop you see is their BNG, there could be many hops between the local Zen device in your city and their BNGs.
But now how does this explain the situation I have where, no matter what BNG I am on, I get the ping for connecting via Manchester. EXCEPT for those 10 minutes the other night where I was properly (and correctly) routed via London with the lower ping to show for it?
Zen are deliberately doing this? For certain this extra route is happening outside of the PPP session since the latency doesn't get lower when connecting via London BNGs except for that 10 minute interval.
At any rate, seems really weird and pointless routing and if it's not just me that is setup this way, with the adoption of the 2.5g service this pointless traffic will start to hurt them I'm fairly sure.
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Yes, CityFibre have a product called CityFibre local, used by providers like Zen, it will save Zen money as their own operational costs are cheaper than leasing a national backhaul.
Zen are likely doing it deliberate for cost reasons, there probably isnt anything in your contract that says you have to go over to their London location.
Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 26-Feb-25 19:17:24)
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Yes, CityFibre have a product called CityFibre local, used by providers like Zen, it will save Zen money as their own operational costs are cheaper than leasing a national backhaul.
Zen are likely doing it deliberate for cost reasons, there probably isnt anything in your contract that says you have to go over to their London location. This isn't about a contract. I don't really do things that are particularly latency sensitive (maybe NTP server, but it's not really latency, but jitter that hurts there).
I'm trying to fathom the cost saving of sending users in the south into the Manchester BNGs (and via Manchester even when connecting to London BNGs). Then sending 90%+ of the traffic back down to London for peering anyway. Even routing to sites in Manchester very often route Machester -> London -> Manchester. If it's on their network they still need to pay for the cable they're now using capacity in both directions. The fact that for 10 minutes I had a 4ms ping means they have a link from my exchange into London. So, it's just bizarre to choose to send traffic that way.
I'm also going to lay money down that they have people North of Manchester feeding into the London gateways. It just seems non-sensical to me and as people take up full fibre more (and especially the max products), they're going to see capacity hit on these links because of, what seems to me at least to be wastage.
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This isn't about a contract. I don't really do things that are particularly latency sensitive (maybe NTP server, but it's not really latency, but jitter that hurts there).
I'm trying to fathom the cost saving of sending users in the south into the Manchester BNGs (and via Manchester even when connecting to London BNGs). Then sending 90%+ of the traffic back down to London for peering anyway. Even routing to sites in Manchester very often route Machester -> London -> Manchester. If it's on their network they still need to pay for the cable they're now using capacity in both directions. The fact that for 10 minutes I had a 4ms ping means they have a link from my exchange into London. So, it's just bizarre to choose to send traffic that way.
I'm also going to lay money down that they have people North of Manchester feeding into the London gateways. It just seems non-sensical to me and as people take up full fibre more (and especially the max products), they're going to see capacity hit on these links because of, what seems to me at least to be wastage.
It is Zen's own backhaul and fibre as far as I know, so if that is the case then there are no extra costs even if they do go a long way around. If they just let everyone take the shortest route its likely they have an imbalance with one side of their network under utilised and the other segment over utilised, so to keep things balanced some customers end up going the long way around.
BT Wholesale are very similar and don't always route customers on the shortest link. On my FTTP connection, no matter the ISP I've had, when using BT Wholesale backhaul to get to London, my latency to the gateway in London can vary, seems to be three routes I can be assigned from my location, happens at random when first connecting giving me either 9ms, 7ms, or 5ms latency. A couple of times the 9ms route has changed overnight to 5ms without the connection dropping for a few hours then changed back up again (as seen on the BQM), presumably because of some overnight work and I've failed over to another route then moved back again when the work has finished.
The big difference with BT Wholesale is they don't seem to be doing it for load balancing or at least don't get imbalances that they have to correct like Zen, as with Zen backhaul I never had more than 2 weeks uptime before I was dropped in the early hours to come back up on the Manchester route, with a big jump in latency. With BT Wholesale I've gone over 200 days without a disconnection, I'd be getting onto almost 300 days if it wasn't for a line card that needed replacing that knocked me off.
This routing issue with Zen has been a constant reoccurring theme in these forums, it has been going on for years and years, its not going to get fixed, as it is working as far as Zen are concerned, i.e. its by design.
Edited by E300 (Thu 27-Feb-25 09:22:39)
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Just in case someone is interested, I've been connecting via London for the vast majority of the time for a good few months now after initially getting stuck on Manchester for a bit earlier last year (I'm in Maidenhead, Berkshire) but occasionally I do get disconnected (usually in the early hours) and end up on Manchester for a while but most of the time it seems to kick me off and put me back on London again without me having to do anything.
It happened again last night, I was routing via Manchester for about 16 minutes (02:57-03:13):
My Broadband Ping
Also, trace routes suggest I'm not being routed to Manchester and back when I'm connecting via London.
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