That’s pretty good really. Capability of the BTW network is not to be sniffed at.

Yeah a whole 10ms at least lower than VM from my location

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

12-13ms ro london is prob Glasgow / Edinburgh

15-16 in Derry N.Ireland

Similar latency from Edinburgh/Glasgow as Northern Ireland. Not quite as low as 12ms.

13.9ms from Edinburgh to London is the lowest I've seen on any residential ISP. That's on Openreach via BT Wholesale.
Talktalk over Openreach is 15.5ms.

Cityfibre from Edinburgh was slightly higher at around 16ms (Vodafone).
I haven't tested Zen over Cityfibre but they don't beat BT Wholesale on Openreach.

Virgin is 20ms from Edinburgh to London, though the jitter on DOCSIS is shocking meaning this bounces around.

12ms on CityFibre is likely the North of England somewhere.

Edit: just seen OP is in Derby.

Edited by j0hn83 (Sat 27-Nov-21 11:29:45)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

it could be that your packets flow from Derby to Manchester to London, and this all takes place at layer 2 so it doesn't appear in the traceroute.

From what I've read elsewhere I think that would be the case, a regionalised hub and spoke network at L2.

I've not seen any of the other major providers via Openreach get to the ping times that BTW can achieve.

My TalkTalk Biz connection has a 2 -3 ms higher base pings than the previous BTW network. Nothing at all to raise a sweat over mind you.

The only 'superior' AltNet ping times are from London-based Community Fibre on their own network, but that's pretty easy when you're operating within 10 miles of Telehouse and Equinix.

Often your routing will change with Zen as they don't run their network necessarily based on the best latency, more about spreading the load. From Leicester I get 6ms at best to sites in London, but often it can be has high as 12ms as it goes up to Manchester then back to London.

If you drop WAN/PPP and force a reconnection, it might take a few attempts, but I bet you might find that latency half as by chance you will end up on the direct route to London, in my experience anyway.

The problem it seems is many people get wise to this, so over several weeks routes to London become congested as people play the system, so you might find overnight you are unceremoniously kicked off and reconnected back to a higher latency route, and have to play the game of chance again if lowest latency is important to you.

This is from Leicestershire, but it's a leased line service (Exponential-e on-net, Openreach EAD), to give an idea of what is possible on some networks. First hop is always the London core.

gateway # execute ping outlook.office.com
PING outlook.ha.office365.com (52.97.241.162): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 52.97.241.162: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=5.6 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.241.162: icmp_seq=1 ttl=243 time=5.6 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.241.162: icmp_seq=2 ttl=243 time=5.6 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.241.162: icmp_seq=3 ttl=243 time=5.5 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.241.162: icmp_seq=4 ttl=243 time=5.5 ms

--- outlook.ha.office365.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 5.5/5.5/5.6 ms

gateway # execute ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.0.81): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=61 time=4.5 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=1 ttl=61 time=4.5 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=2 ttl=61 time=4.5 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=3 ttl=61 time=4.4 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=4 ttl=61 time=4.5 ms

--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 4.4/4.4/4.5 ms

A Community Fibre service in London:

traceroute to bbc.co.uk (151.101.0.81), 30 hops max, 46 byte packets
1 x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x) 1.846 ms 1.741 ms 1.734 ms
2 94.177.138.97 (94.177.138.97) 1.986 ms 1.782 ms 1.986 ms
3 xge-0-2-5.ar03.thn.lon.network.as201838.net (94.247.86.34) 2.111 ms 1.882 ms 1.983 ms
4 lag-1.edge1.thn.lon.network.as201838.net (94.247.87.53) 1.858 ms 1.862 ms 1.730 ms

I'm in Twickenham and the BBC ( presumably also in the London area ) and I get:

for IPV6

Pinging bbc.co.uk [2a04:4e42::81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2a04:4e42::81: time=5ms
Reply from 2a04:4e42::81: time=5ms
Reply from 2a04:4e42::81: time=5ms
Reply from 2a04:4e42::81: time=5ms

Ping statistics for 2a04:4e42::81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 5ms


Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [2a04:4e42::81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms fritz.box [2a02:8011:700d:0:e228:6dff:feb8:9fab]
2 6 ms 23 ms 6 ms lo-0.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [2a02:8010::100]
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms ae-8.p1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [2a02:8010:0:700::3a]
4 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms fastly-gw1.no-dns-yet.lonap.net [2001:7f8:17::d361:1]
5 10 ms 5 ms 5 ms 2a04:4e42::81

Trace complete.

and for IPV4

ping -4 bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 6ms, Average = 5ms

tracert -4 bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms 7 ms fritz.box [194.32.67.8]
2 112 ms 85 ms 5 ms vt1.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.21]
3 6 ms 6 ms 8 ms lag-8.p2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.172]
4 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms lag-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.167]
5 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms ip81-59.fastly-gw1.lonap.net [5.57.81.59]
6 7 ms 5 ms 6 ms 151.101.0.81

Trace complete.

Leased line in London (Virtual1, Openreach EAD)

$ ping outlook.office.com
PING outlook.ha.office365.com (52.97.208.50): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=1.704 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=1 ttl=243 time=1.761 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=2 ttl=243 time=1.789 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=3 ttl=243 time=1.811 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=4 ttl=243 time=1.686 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=5 ttl=243 time=1.726 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=6 ttl=243 time=1.576 ms
64 bytes from 52.97.208.50: icmp_seq=7 ttl=243 time=1.730 ms

--- outlook.ha.office365.com ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.576/1.723/1.811/0.068 ms


$ ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.0.81): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=1.172 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=1.157 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=1.254 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=1.285 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=1.263 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=5 ttl=56 time=1.250 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=6 ttl=56 time=1.189 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.0.81: icmp_seq=7 ttl=56 time=1.291 ms

--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.157/1.233/1.291/0.049 ms

TalkTalk Business FTTP (Openreach) from EAIPS (Suffolk):

>> ping outlook.office.com
SEQ HOST SIZE TTL TIME STATUS
0 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
1 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
2 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
3 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
4 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
5 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
6 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
7 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
8 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
9 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
10 52.97.146.210 56 243 10ms
sent=11 received=11 packet-loss=0% min-rtt=10ms avg-rtt=10ms max-rtt=10ms

>> ping bbc.co.uk
SEQ HOST SIZE TTL TIME STATUS
0 151.101.192.81 56 59 10ms
1 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
2 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
3 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
4 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
5 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
6 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
7 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
8 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
9 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
10 151.101.192.81 56 59 9ms
sent=11 received=11 packet-loss=0% min-rtt=9ms avg-rtt=9ms max-rtt=10ms

Intersite from London to Suffolk via IPSEC is around 10ms.

This was pretty much what i was thinking it should be given its full fibre and a new network. Shouldn't be any over subscription.

I'd be interested to see what any CF/Zen customers get in Leicester.

I did reboot the router recently for the IPV6 config to be added but still connected to the same first visable hop.