pings high

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to post this question so forgive me if wrong!

Doing a tracRoute on my connection ALWAYS shows that my pings go thru amsterdam and/or frankfurt, even if pinging a uk site like google.co.uk

Is this normal? the ISP (Pipex) stated that the signal will always look for the fastest route, but i find it hard to swallow that this IS the fastest rout. anyone got any ideas/info?

Trace route below

Target Name: ug-in-f104.google.com
IP: 66.249.93.104
Date/Time: 20/01/2007 18:32:09

1 * 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 1 ms * 1 ms 1 ms 0 ms [192.168.0.1]
2 72 ms * 53 ms * 105 ms 53 ms 52 ms 56 ms * 53 ms lo99.mk-0-ips.as9105.net [212.74.111.5]
3 73 ms 58 ms 51 ms 82 ms * 52 ms * 59 ms * * ge0-1.mk0.as9105.net [80.40.119.137]
4 65 ms 57 ms 54 ms 86 ms 122 ms 54 ms 56 ms 62 ms 57 ms * pos3-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.108.10]
5 66 ms * * 86 ms 119 ms 68 ms 55 ms 57 ms 53 ms 54 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
6 * * 60 ms * 115 ms 60 ms * * * 54 ms ge-7-1-0.lon11.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.77.49]
7 59 ms 54 ms 57 ms * 107 ms * 56 ms * 54 ms 54 ms [213.200.78.34]
8 58 ms 56 ms 66 ms 79 ms * 104 ms 54 ms 59 ms * 55 ms if-11-0.mcore3.LHX-London.teleglobe.net [195.219.15.214]
9 68 ms 64 ms * 94 ms 127 ms 268 ms * 69 ms * 65 ms if-6-0.core1.AD1-Amsterdam.teleglobe.net [80.231.80.29]
10 * * * 96 ms 287 ms 78 ms 64 ms * 67 ms 64 ms Vlan2.msfc1.AD1-Amsterdam.teleglobe.net [80.231.82.4]
11 66 ms 67 ms * 106 ms 105 ms 75 ms 64 ms 68 ms 63 ms 67 ms Vlan198.msfc1.AD1-Amsterdam.teleglobe.net [80.231.82.194]
12 66 ms * * 99 ms 106 ms 77 ms 66 ms 68 ms 70 ms 66 ms [64.233.175.246]
13 -32764 ms -32764 ms -32764 ms -32764 ms 116 ms * 67 ms 67 ms * * [72.14.233.83]
14 -32764 ms 76 ms * -32764 ms 125 ms -32764 ms 79 ms * -32764 ms 70 ms [66.249.94.46]
15 67 ms * * 104 ms 109 ms * 66 ms * 67 ms 71 ms ug-in-f104.google.com [66.249.93.104]

If you're using Pipex, they have you on a Tiscali LLU product.
The first six IP addresses (apart from your internal 192.168.0.1) are all Tiscali IPs, and look like the trace-route doesn't go anywhere near a Pipex server or gateway.

Firstly, your traceroute is showing that the vast majority of the latency is on the first hop, so the problem is the location of your ISP RAS rather than the route from the ISP to Google, or more likely it's the contention between the DSLAM and the ISP RAS.

Secondly, Amsterdam is as close in networking terms as London is for most UK internet access. Amsterdam internet exchange is the biggest in the world, and most ISPs have very high capacity routes through to this exchange.

Thirdly, the Google servers for the UK are located in Amsterdam anyway

Thanks for reply.

I asked Pipex if th eline is unbundled and they have stated it isn't, is there any way I can verify conclusively th einformation you gave?

Cheers,

Michael

"Firstly, your traceroute is showing that the vast majority of the latency is on the first hop, so the problem is the location of your ISP RAS rather than the route from the ISP to Google, or more likely it's the contention between the DSLAM and the ISP RAS.

Secondly, Amsterdam is as close in networking terms as London is for most UK internet access. Amsterdam internet exchange is the biggest in the world, and most ISPs have very high capacity routes through to this exchange.

Thirdly, the Google servers for the UK are located in Amsterdam anyway"

Thanks for the reply and info,
Given that the first hop is the problem, is this likely to be down to poor hardware (ie the Bt landline)
something i am donig wrong with router (I have checked settings thoroughly across several internet sites but won't exclude my own failings!)
Something that the ISP could (and should) be resolving
or lastly something that won't change no matter who is the ISP?

I have added some tech info, re line stability etc

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 1946527 2096028 0 1333 4434 42:56:41
LAN 10M/100M 2006758 1892844 0 4009 1513 42:56:59
WLAN 11M/54M 68791 62727 0 585 159 20:36:59

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4352 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 21.0 db 9.0 db
Noise Margin 25.4 db 23.0 db

Thanks again for your time,

Michael

You should be getting 8Meg sync with those stats.

In reply to:

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Given that the first hop is the problem, is this likely to be down to poor hardware (ie the Bt landline)
something i am donig wrong with router

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No.

In reply to:

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Something that the ISP could (and should) be resolving

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Could? Probably. Should? Well, 50-60msec is not really that high and you might have difficulty getting the ISP to do anything just on this basis.

One possibility might be to have the ISP disable interleaving, if in fact your line is set to interleave (router stats should show this). This would certainly reduce the latency, although at the expense of increasing the number of errors on the line.

Failing that, if you're concerned enough about the delay on the first hop then changing ISP may be your best bet. However the first hop is dependent on location, so I would first ask around the neighbours to see which ISPs they have and what ping times they're getting.

"Could? Probably. Should? Well, 50-60msec is not really that high and you might have difficulty getting the ISP to do anything just on this basis."

That was a speciman ping, as I as more wondering if where it pinged to en rout was a factor, often pings are well above a 100, sometimes even over 200

As one of my main hobbies is online gaming this has a horrible impact.

I play gaming on an xbox 360 rather than PC, and it is extremely common for me to cause so much lag a game with friends i feel compelled to leave. If gaming in a public lobby often get kicked!

"One possibility might be to have the ISP disable interleaving, if in fact your line is set to interleave (router stats should show this). This would certainly reduce the latency, although at the expense of increasing the number of errors on the line."

I did ask Pipex about this and they said that turning interleaving off would probably make things worse due to packet loss. I don't know enough to have an opinion on this.

"Failing that, if you're concerned enough about the delay on the first hop then changing ISP may be your best bet. However the first hop is dependent on location, so I would first ask around the neighbours to see which ISPs they have and what ping times they're getting."

I live in north east UK, am very close to my exchange, and didn't have any problems with my previous ISP (AOL, liek a fool i went with Pipex coz they were offering 8mb downloads at a fairly low cost when taken with phone package)

Once again thanx for taking tie out etc

I agree that's very high if you're going to a UK (or Amsterdam!) server. Interleave latency wouldn't account for a significant part of this sort of delay. Unfortunately I still doubt you'll get much joy out of Pipex even though this looks like unreasonable latency somewhere in their network. It looks as though an alternative ISP is the way to go.