In that case they still have a server in London (as I've just done a traceroute to the same IP address as you).
It took three ms to get from London to 91.199.78.82
So either Uno is lying (about not having a server in London - can't think why he'd be doing that, and surely he'd be more likely to know where his servers are located than you or I) or we're both reading too much into the response times between each step.

EDIT: In any case; I don't see why a fibre-optic cable couldn't get a signal from London to Manchester in 2ms (in a vacuum light can go 370+ miles in that time), so we only need to add a bit of delay for the server to respond.

Edited by adebov (Tue 08-May-12 23:43:46)

In reply to a post by adebov:

In that case they still have a server in London (as I've just done a traceroute to the same IP address as you).
It took three ms to get from London to 91.199.78.82
So either Uno is lying (about not having a server in London - can't think why he'd be doing that, and surely he'd be more likely to know where his servers are located than you or I) or we're both reading too much into the response times between each step.

EDIT: In any case; I don't see why a fibre-optic cable couldn't get a signal from London to Manchester in 2ms (in a vacuum light can go 370+ miles in that time), so we only need to add a bit of delay for the server to respond.

No, I said already the server has changed.

Manchester (Xilo) no longer points to 91.199.78.82, it now points to 31.193.12.35. I stated this clearly in my previous post:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Since I reported it the server pointed to by the Manchester (Xilo) speed test has changed, it's now 31.193.12.35 so I guess they fixed it without responding to my support ticket.

Data on most major networks takes about 6-8ms to get from Manchester to London. Data does not travel at the speed of light, not even down fibre optic cables. There's added delay for extra switches and routers in the way as well as amplifiers and repeaters. Try reading this or for more information go here

Manchester to the Docklands in London is about 325km by road. Under ideal conditions and at the speed of light (in fibre) a 650km round trip would take at least 3.2ms with no switches routers or amplifiers in the equation.

As a comparison, on BT it takes 9ms, on Virgin Media it takes 6ms, on JANET it takes 7ms (via Leeds) and Cogentco manages it in 5ms.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:13:16)

How do you know that xilo IP address is Manchester? Could it be Maidenhead?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How do you know that xilo IP address is Manchester? Could it be Maidenhead?

That was the IP address Wireshark showed my traffic going to/from when I clicked Manchester (Xilo) on the server selection page.

My presumption is Speedtest.net screwed up their flash configuration at some point. I reported it a couple months ago, it appears to have been fixed (though they never replied to my report). So the Manchester server is now in Manchester, or at least, you no longer connect to a London-ish server when you click Manchester.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:06:01)

Thanks.

Nope, we have *no* servers in London, as I have said.

Matt

Maybe..

We were still seeing 60-90Mbit/s on Manchester.

Matt

[Snip]

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 00:43:37)

I mean sustained bandwidth for the tests

Matt

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

No, I said already the server has changed.

Manchester (Xilo) no longer points to 91.199.78.82, it now points to 31.193.12.35. I stated this clearly in my previous post:

I know; that's why I deliberately repeated the traceroute to the IP address you gave (rather than the resolved name for their Manchester speedtest server, or 31.193.12.35).
I was trying to replicate the times you saw (albeit with slightly different routing) and did, indeed, do that (showing around 3ms difference between a server you've already stated is definitely in London and 91.199.78.82 (where ever that IP is, it's likely not to have moved far, as the timings are pretty much the same).

There wouldn't have been a lot of point me doing a traceroute to a server now based in Manchester, to prove (either way) the timings from London to somewhere near London (the point being to see how far away, in terms of typical commercial traffic, that server is likely to be from - I guess - the north-east end of Docklands), and at 3ms (give or take) it's fairly close to London - most likely either Maidenhead or Milton Keynes (if, indeed, it's still a Xilo server at 91.199.78.82).

Given the timings you've mentioned from London to Manchester (6-8ms), 91.199.78.82 is unlikely to be more than 100km from Docklands (Maidenhead and MK are both within that distance).

It all goes back to a comment I posted a while back (something along the lines of "how come my ping to Manchester is 10ms, yet pings to MK - around 30 miles away - are 26ms, unless BT is doing some weird-ass routing, or the Manchester server isn't in Manchester").
EDIT: Or how come pings to Manchester are the same as to Coventry (with Coventry less than 30 miles up the road and Manchester something like 130 miles away - does data really go 100 miles in zero ms).
EDIT2: Another oddity - Paris 10ms, Manchester 10ms, London 26ms (surely the Paris data goes through London on its way out of the country).

Edited by adebov (Wed 09-May-12 00:36:43)