FTTC sync speed is not a reliable indicator

e.g. 20 Mbps sync here and pinging our servers over an IDNet connection at 9ms

8 to 8.5ms to the first hop.

The real variable for FTTC is the depth of interleaving applied (i.e. error correction).

Not expecting any decrease when FTTP rolls around, maybe 1ms.

I've tested the closest one to where I physically live.

Closest server is Vodafone UK - Watford and still showing 15ms.

If I manually change the server to Vodafone UK - Manchester, I get 8-9ms ping.

I'm in Milton Keynes.


I've been comparing BT and Vodafone connections on Rocket League.

BT connected to ASUS RT-AC68U. Wired to PS4 only.

Vodafone connected to ASUS RT-AC86U. Wired to PC only.

Rocket League supports cross-platform, so I created a private match on PC and invited myself to my PS4. One of the game shows that PS4 (BT) gets around 12ms whilst PC (Vodafone) gets around 20ms. They're on the same game server as well.



What's the average ping you're getting at the moment?

The difference in pings between both providers is negligable and even then online gaming has balancing measures in place so those with the lowest ping are not at a competitive advantage to those with higher pings. Vodafone routes much of its traffic through Manchester because they have a large office there (former C&W building).

I'm getting FTTP installed next month, I'm not expecting a massive change in latency, if any at all .

They are routing your line via Manchester.


So for the majority of connections you make are going from Milton Keynes to Manchester, then to London (then onwards to the test of the world if not hosted in London.

Your friend with the lower ping is being routed direct to London.

So you have the added latency of all your traffic going up to Manchester and back down to London.
There's isn't a whole lot hosted in Manchester.

Post the results of a tracert to a couple addresses, it might show in the 1st couple hops where the traffic is going.

Get your friend to do the same if possible.

Ideally Vodafone get the routing changed as going via Manchester makes no sense.

You're totally right. I knew it.

Why would Vodafone route my line to Manchester though? Is this a rare case or?

My friend will do the trace route tomorrow afternoon, so I will share it with you all on here. I'm pretty sure his line is routed to London because his pings on online games are identical to my BT. My BT line is definitely routed to London.

Also, I will give a call to Vodafone Technical Team again and ask to be transferred to someone who knows what I am talking about (hopefully).


As requested, here are the results of tracert (CoD Warzone on PS4). I've tested on 2 different UK servers on the same game. I've also used BT connection on 2nd ASUS router for comparison, then did the tracert on 2nd PC connected to BT. All on wired connection only.


Warzone Server 1 on Vodafone: https://i.imgur.com/rOSJ3Vk.png

Warzone Server 1 on BT: https://i.imgur.com/jhO7QgH.png

Warzone Server 2 on Vodafone: https://i.imgur.com/OfBJPel.png

Warzone Server 2 on BT: https://i.imgur.com/hiebcFT.png

For those wondering how I got the IP addresses of Warzone's servers, I use a third-party software from PC to 'sniff' any IP addresses including game servers on PS4.

I wouldn't say it's rare, just unfortunate. I'd say it's incredibly unlikely the people on the phone will be able to help unless they can raise directly to their network admin team. I wish you luck though!

Hi all again,

Some of you have asked me to share the results of my friend's tracert. We have used the exact same IP addresses. It appears that his (lets call him Brad) line is being routed to Slough which is only 20 miles away from London whereas my line is being routed to Manchester. This explains why he gets much lower pings on online video games whereas mine is almost doubled.

We both live in Milton Keynes and we're 10 minutes drive away from each other.


The results:

Brad's tracert 151.101.0.81 (bbc.co.uk): https://i.imgur.com/3FLCKOs.jpg

My tracert 151.101.0.81 (bbc.co.uk): https://i.imgur.com/aQUJ6Gf.jpg

-

Brad's tracert 8.8.8.8 (dns.google): https://i.imgur.com/q48gyXl.jpg

My tracert 8.8.8.8 (dns.google): https://i.imgur.com/DJZigPh.jpg

-

Brad's tracert 78.129.201.32 (CoD Warzone): https://i.imgur.com/kj1z9zh.jpg

My tracert 78.129.201.32 (CoD Warzone): https://i.imgur.com/yivoPbL.jpg


Contacted Vodafone today to be told that their 3rd line support team is only open on Monday - Friday. They gave me a reference number so I can call directly to 3rd line team without having to explain everything again tomorrow Monday.

Also, I want to say thank you all for your posts

It is odd that you seem to be being routed via Manchester. But BT customers are routed via London, wherever they live. So those in the north like me don’t get good pings.

Did you ever get this sorted out? My Gigafast line (also in MK) has started routing up to Manchester as well -

% traceroute -I -a fastmail.com 
traceroute: Warning: fastmail.com has multiple addresses; using 66.111.4.147
traceroute to fastmail.com (66.111.4.147), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
 1  [AS0] vodafone (192.168.1.254)  3.700 ms  2.587 ms  2.017 ms
 2  [AS5378] 84.65.128.1 (84.65.128.1)  11.727 ms  10.573 ms  11.551 ms
 3  [AS1273] 63.130.104.202 (63.130.104.202)  11.841 ms  11.807 ms  11.961 ms
 4  [AS1273] ae5-100-xcr1.man.cw.net (195.89.96.113)  22.933 ms  10.926 ms  11.486 ms
 5  [AS1273] ae1-ucr1.bsh.cw.net (195.2.27.193)  17.791 ms  18.685 ms  18.373 ms
 6  [AS1273] ae20-xcr1.lnd.cw.net (195.2.27.190)  16.798 ms  16.207 ms  17.633 ms
 7  [AS1273] ae3-xcr2.lsw.cw.net (195.2.28.182)  17.582 ms  18.077 ms  17.583 ms
 8  [AS1273] so-4-0-0-zar1.fri.cw.net (195.2.2.118)  17.634 ms  16.654 ms  17.687 ms
 9  [AS0] ae11.mpr1.lhr1.uk.zip.zayo.com (64.125.27.49)  18.144 ms  18.317 ms  17.492 ms
10  [AS0] ae10.mpr2.lhr2.uk.zip.zayo.com (64.125.31.194)  17.845 ms  18.358 ms  17.658 ms
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  [AS0] ae20.mpr2.ewr1.us.zip.zayo.com (64.125.26.143)  93.567 ms  86.924 ms  84.169 ms
14  [AS0] ae3.mpr2.ewr1.us.zip.zayo.com (64.125.31.238)  84.921 ms  84.681 ms  86.120 ms
15  [AS0] 208.184.34.238.ipyx-076763-900-zyo.zip.zayo.com (208.184.34.238)  86.148 ms  88.958 ms  86.647 ms
16  [AS11403] 199.83.60.138.static.nyinternet.net (199.83.60.138)  88.435 ms  85.663 ms  86.502 ms
17  [AS11403] www.fastmail.com (66.111.4.147)  84.557 ms  85.157 ms  85.272 ms

A trace route to 1.1.1.1 appears to show the routing going up to Manchester, down to London and then across to France instead of just going straight to London and then hitting Cloudflare's London datacenter!

% traceroute -I -a 1.1.1.1     
traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
 1  [AS0] vodafone (192.168.1.254)  3.258 ms  2.183 ms  2.336 ms
 2  [AS5378] 84.65.128.1 (84.65.128.1)  12.092 ms  10.716 ms  11.641 ms
 3  [AS1273] 63.130.104.202 (63.130.104.202)  12.318 ms  12.144 ms  12.438 ms
 4  [AS1273] ae5-100-xcr1.man.cw.net (195.89.96.113)  13.287 ms  10.484 ms  14.396 ms
 5  [AS1273] ae0-ucr1.mcr.cw.net (195.2.28.70)  12.429 ms  13.092 ms  11.819 ms
 6  [AS1273] ae16-xcr1.lnt.cw.net (195.2.27.165)  17.439 ms  19.540 ms  18.495 ms
 7  [AS2914] ae-20.r02.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.66.45)  18.703 ms  17.683 ms  18.677 ms
 8  [AS2914] ae-11.r21.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.85)  19.603 ms  17.035 ms  18.772 ms
 9  [AS2914] ae-6.r21.parsfr04.fr.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.25)  28.494 ms  28.426 ms  28.255 ms
10  [AS2914] ae-5.r03.parsfr02.fr.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.207)  26.447 ms  26.756 ms  26.416 ms
11  [AS2914] 185.84.18.174 (185.84.18.174)  27.010 ms  26.663 ms  42.625 ms
12  [AS198949] one.one.one.one (1.1.1.1)  26.285 ms  26.953 ms  26.583 ms


Cant be sure when this started happening but can't be more than a few weeks. I tried restarting the ONT and router but no change...

Edited by Adrianuk (Sun 22-Nov-20 15:57:57)

In reply to a post by Adrianuk:

A trace route to 1.1.1.1 appears to show the routing going up to Manchester, down to London and then across to France instead of just going straight to London and then hitting Cloudflare's London datacenter!

I'd be very careful about assuming that 1.1.1.1 is supposed to be routed through London. Usually that's the case but sometimes Cloudflare re-routes entire data centres (due to outages or for maintenance). The whole of Cloudflare's UK data centres were re-routed through Amsterdam the other day and traceroutes to 1.1.1.1 on BT are still showing up as routed via Amsterdam for me even though Cloudflare's UK data centres are now operational again.

traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 OpenWrt.lan (192.168.0.254) 0.219 ms 0.227 ms 0.244 ms
2 172.16.16.87 (172.16.16.87) 1.543 ms 1.552 ms 1.578 ms
3 * * *
4 31.55.186.184 (31.55.186.184) 6.461 ms 6.486 ms 6.498 ms
5 core4-hu0-8-0-3.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (213.121.192.68) 6.467 ms 6.913 ms 6.973 ms
6 62.6.201.144 (62.6.201.144) 6.981 ms 6.391 ms 6.395 ms
7 166-49-209-132.gia.bt.net (166.49.209.132) 6.046 ms 6.054 ms 6.140 ms
8 t2c3-et-7-3-0.nl-ams2.gia.bt.net (166.49.195.174) 11.155 ms 11.168 ms 11.200 ms
9 * * *
10 one.one.one.one (1.1.1.1) 12.425 ms 12.370 ms 13.106 ms