Change gateway?

Edited by zebb_edi (Fri 20-Aug-21 08:24:38)

In reply to a post by zebb_edi:

Yes that's precisely why I want it set to always be London as i'm getting 17ms ping on speedtests and on FTTP it seems higher than necessary.

I've emailed them to see if they are able to switch you.

Edited by faxfan2002 (Sat 25-Sep-21 16:58:33)

In reply to a post by ukwiz:

When my latency increased from 7 to 20 earlier this month I raised a ticket with Zen. Here is their response:

Zen servers work to ensure that latency is spread as evenly as possible between our customers. Rather than have one customer with high latency and 10 with tiny latency we want our servers to ensure that no individual has significantly more or less latency than anyone on the server as nobodie's traffic should be prioritized.

Multiple online sources state latencies of less than 50Ms as good. A latency of 20Ms is universally considered excellent or even unrealistic to aim for. Your latency could have increased due to a number of factors, but the most likely one is that usage in your area increased so to ensure everybody had a good browsing experience everyone's latency increased slightly to allow for the greater throughput needs without impacting service.

If internet traffic increases in your area further your latency is likely to increase along side that in order to ensure everyone has the best browsing experience. We cannot save particularly good latencies for individual customers as it would give all our other users a worse experience. If your latency regularly reaches 200-500Ms unloaded then there may be a loading issue on your line that could need investigation and addressing, but with it still being at above excellent rates we are unable to take further action.

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 25-Sep-21 19:00:55)

In reply to a post by ukwiz:

When my latency increased from 7 to 20 earlier this month I raised a ticket with Zen. Here is their response:

Zen servers work to ensure that latency is spread as evenly as possible between our customers. Rather than have one customer with high latency and 10 with tiny latency we want our servers to ensure that no individual has significantly more or less latency than anyone on the server as nobodie's traffic should be prioritized.

Multiple online sources state latencies of less than 50Ms as good. A latency of 20Ms is universally considered excellent or even unrealistic to aim for. Your latency could have increased due to a number of factors, but the most likely one is that usage in your area increased so to ensure everybody had a good browsing experience everyone's latency increased slightly to allow for the greater throughput needs without impacting service.

If internet traffic increases in your area further your latency is likely to increase along side that in order to ensure everyone has the best browsing experience. We cannot save particularly good latencies for individual customers as it would give all our other users a worse experience. If your latency regularly reaches 200-500Ms unloaded then there may be a loading issue on your line that could need investigation and addressing, but with it still being at above excellent rates we are unable to take further action.

In reply to a post by devonkev:

From my understanding, the latency difference is down to Zen’s geographically diverse network. This is a good thing if reliability is your main concern, not so good if you’re a stock trader 😊.

Edited by E300 (Mon 27-Sep-21 14:39:27)

Edited by TygerTyger2010 (Tue 28-Sep-21 08:44:33)

Edited by francisuk25 (Sat 27-Nov-21 17:18:06)

In reply to a post by F9B54DA3BB3C:

Thanks to both of your for your replies, I'm still looking into this further; however the following might be of interest / use, particularly for techguy:

Connections to the vt1.cor2.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk gateway peer with Cloudflare in Manchester (as you've seem)

Connections to the vt1.cor2.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk gateway peer with Cloudflare in London, which reduced latency by close to 10ms in my testing.

Lond1 & Lond2 seems to be more or less randomly on reconnecting the PPPoE connection, whereas connecting to a London or a Manchester gateway appears to be set based on geography; but with a few geographical errors!


My investigations remain ongoing and I'll update this thread again if I discover anything else interesting!

Edited by pluralist (Sat 27-Nov-21 20:40:27)

francis@dellxps~$ traceroute 78.40.149.14
traceroute to 78.40.149.14 (78.40.149.14), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.178.1) 0.364 ms 43.394 ms 43.382 ms
2 vt1.cor1.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk (51.148.72.23) 34.228 ms 34.456 ms 34.435 ms
3 lag-8.p2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.206) 26.077 ms 26.258 ms 26.236 ms
4 lag-2.p1.wh-man.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.229) 26.215 ms 26.442 ms 26.421 ms
5 lag-1.br1.wh-man.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.45) 27.249 ms 27.227 ms 26.905 ms
6 * * *
7 78.40.150.181 (78.40.150.181) 25.835 ms 26.065 ms 26.038 ms
8 80.84.92.178 (80.84.92.178) 27.515 ms 27.239 ms 27.469 ms
9 78.40.150.186 (78.40.150.186) 26.495 ms 26.675 ms 26.649 ms
10 78.40.149.14 (78.40.149.14) 28.277 ms 27.403 ms 27.532 ms

francis@dellxps:~$ traceroute lon-gb-ping.vultr.com
traceroute to lon-gb-ping.vultr.com (108.61.196.101), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.178.1) 0.268 ms 0.434 ms 0.513 ms
2 vt1.cor1.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk (51.148.72.23) 32.841 ms 33.019 ms 33.249 ms
3 lag-8.p2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.206) 21.498 ms 21.478 ms lag-7.p1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.186) 21.458 ms
4 lag-2.br1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.195) 20.587 ms 20.666 ms 20.594 ms
5 vl32-br1-cer.lon3.choopa.net (195.66.226.176) 21.672 ms 21.402 ms 21.631 ms
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 108.61.196.101.vultr.com (108.61.196.101) 21.633 ms 21.864 ms 21.844 ms

francis@dellxps:$ traceroute lon.lg.extravm.com
traceroute to lon.lg.extravm.com (54.38.210.17), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.178.1) 0.277 ms 0.444 ms 0.523 ms
2 vt1.cor1.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk (51.148.72.23) 20.322 ms 20.500 ms 20.529 ms
3 lag-8.p2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.206) 20.557 ms 20.485 ms 20.515 ms
4 lag-1.br1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.181) 20.393 ms lag-2.br1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.195) 20.422 ms lag-1.br1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.181) 20.451 ms
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 be101.lon1-eri1-g2-nc5.uk.eu (91.121.215.119) 21.389 ms vl1272.lon1-eri1-d1-a75.uk.eu (213.186.32.253) 20.822 ms be101.lon1-eri1-g2-nc5.uk.eu (91.121.215.119) 21.354 ms
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
21 * * *
22 * * *
23 * * *
24 * * *
25 * * *
26 * * *
27 * * *
28 * * *
29 * * *
30 * * *

Edited by francisuk25 (Sun 28-Nov-21 04:48:28)

Edited by francisuk25 (Sun 28-Nov-21 09:30:53)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Indeed, but it isn't the same router that has responded. Also tracing to cloudfare as opposed to thinkbroadband's Firebrick might not make a difference in theory, but theory and practice do not always agree. I'm sure you have been around long enough to have found that many times.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

Interestingly this seems to happen if you enter www.bbc.co.uk instead of bbc.co.uk as the traceroute destination.

Text
1 2	... Tracing route to uk.www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk [212.58.237.253]

1
23
45
67

$ dig www.bbc.co.uk
...;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.bbc.co.uk.          16836   IN      CNAME   www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk.www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk. 76 IN      CNAME   uk.www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk.
uk.www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk. 161 IN  A       212.58.237.253uk.www.bbc.co.uk.pri.bbc.co.uk. 161 IN  A       212.58.233.253