Hey!Broadband High Latency to Specific Network

I had Hey Broadband installed on Friday - thanks to everyone here for the information on what to expect 👍

I have an issue where the latency to/from the leased line at work is much higher than expected

If I ping my HB IP address from various connections I get the following results

Office LL - 55ms
Trooli FTTP - 10ms
Talk Talk FTTP - 11ms
Talk Talk FTTC - 13ms

(These number are similar if I ping from my HB connection, all the services are located in the South East)

What would cause the route between our Office LL and HB to have such a high latency? and who should I be talking too to try and get it resolved?

TIA
John

Use a tool like MTR to compare routes. That'll show where the latency is being added.

As has been mentioned, do a traceroute and put the results here. An indication of where you are physically located would be good as well.

In terms of what you can do about it, probably nothing - residential broadband has no latency SLA and a consistent 55ms is not going to cause you any problems.

Is that ping direct to Office Network appliance, or is it ping over a tunnel (VPN/SSH) to the Office.

Really 55ms isn't that long.

You should be able to do voice comms without an issue.

The more important number is data transfer rate ie Mbps. Let say got large file to download and it 1GB, if transfrate will take
1Mbit = 02h:13m
5Mbit = 00h:26m
10Mbit = 00h:13m

https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/data-transfer

Thank you, that is a new tool to me

https://photos.app.goo.gl/r9FMQZ74YAwyfikH8

Here is the trace, both endpoints are located in the South East of England

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms x.x.x.x
2 3 ms 2 ms 1 ms x.x.x.x
3 6 ms 2 ms 2 ms 172.26.0.122
4 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms 185.246.132.8
5 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 185.246.132.5
6 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms te0-2-1-15.rcr51.lon10.atlas.cogentco.com [149.11.23.193]
7 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms be2592.ccr42.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.60.245]
8 10 ms 10 ms 9 ms be12489.ccr42.par01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.57.70]
9 26 ms 26 ms 25 ms be2318.ccr32.bio02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.61.117]
10 36 ms 25 ms 25 ms be2325.ccr32.mad05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.61.134]
11 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 149.14.243.210
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 45 ms 45 ms 45 ms 194.35.42.13
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 51 ms 51 ms 51 ms x.x.x.x

Trace complete.

I am talking to the Leased Line supplier, as you say I am more likely to get some traction with them if the routing issue is in their network

Edited by john_32 (Tue 10-Oct-23 14:10:26)

The ping is direct public IP to Public IP, although pinging through a VPN tunnel gives similar results as expected.

Pinging 192.168.240.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.240.1: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.240.1: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.240.1: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.240.1: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=63

Transfer rate is where I would expect it (peaking around 200Mbps) which is the limitation of the leased line.

That's good news if we have to live with the 55ms, just made me question if there is a routing issue and therefore best to get it addressed.

Traffic is going London > Paris > Bilbao? > Madrid > London
Hence the unexpected latency, my own non-Hey connection goes via LINX to 194.35.42.13 with minimal latency much like your Trooli/TalkTalk connections probably do.

You could see if the other direction is a similar path via Cogent.

There is not much you can do but I expect your leased line supplier is your best bet to see they can do anything or persuade Cogent to change the route.

I expect I'll be a strugle to speak to anyone at Hey who will have any idea about routing or be willing do do anything about it.

Surprisingly it doesn't look like Hey!Broadband peer at LINX or LONAP.

I don't know much of anything about routing but it's not the first time I've seen Cogent take strange paths, not sure if it's on purpose because it's cheaper.

The routing/peering of altnets does seem to be a weak point.

edit: Looks like maybe Hey use AS207645 whos only upstream is at linx/lonap so maybe something can be done if LL is also there

Edited by miken06 (Tue 10-Oct-23 16:33:08)

Thank you for the explanation - the distance travelled is not ideal

This is the trace from HB to LL - very different nodes but a similar latency

1 5.181.99.3 (5.181.99.3) 5.893 ms 5.797 ms 5.748 ms
2 * * *
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 et-0-0-0-0.cr4-mad5.ip4.gtt.net (212.222.26.41) 35.047 ms 34.977 ms 34.870 ms
7 ae33.cr0-lon1.ip4.gtt.net (89.149.137.105) 52.333 ms 52.965 ms 53.089 ms
8 ip4.gtt.net (46.33.86.166) 49.465 ms 49.521 ms 49.449 ms
9 185.246.132.9 (185.246.132.9) 50.467 ms 50.254 ms 50.517 ms
10 * * *
11 x.x.x.x 50.594 ms 50.580 ms 50.637 ms

It looks like GTT does the same trip to Spain as Cogent in the other direction.

I'd give your LL provider a chance to improve it, probably by contacting those involved themselves.

As a work around you could use a VPN to somewhere that has a better connection between Hey and the LL but would depend on your works policy to VPNs and/or your ability to roll your own via a hosting provider - I'd probably advise against such option unless you know what you're doing, wouldn't want to leave a backdoor into your office network!