View Full Version : Virgin Media > America
idontpirate
10-03-2009, 11:49
How comes, any ping to any american server is above 100ms for me even ones on the east coast. I thaught it was fibre, not copper phone wire *sigh*. I got about 60-70ms on my sky broadband connection. I dont have any problems with servers in france or germany.
Some of it will be down to the routing but mostly it's an inconvenient thing called the speed of light. France and Germany are much closer than the eastern US so any differences between Sky and VM routing will be less apparent.
AbyssUnderground
10-03-2009, 17:07
Speed of light: 299,792,348m/s
Approx distance to USA: 5000km
Approx distance to USA: 5,000,000 meters
299,792,348 / 5000000 = 59.95
So, the minimum latency to USA is about 60ms, IF the equipment is operating at peak efficiency.
idontpirate
10-03-2009, 17:12
Speed of light: 299,792,348m/s
Approx distance to USA: 5000km
Approx distance to USA: 5,000,000 meters
299,792,348 / 5000000 = 59.95
So, the minimum latency to USA is about 60ms, IF the equipment is operating at peak efficiency.
Thanks for the reply, andy.
My ping to East coast US servers are around 90 -110ms, depending on how far they are away from NY. That's about the same for DSL as well because I know players from the UK on DSL with the same ping as me.
I'll test this NY quake 3 server IP (69.12.99.109) from a neighbours Sky connection later on this week, if i remember that is. I'll bet it's about the same or even higher than my VM connection.
here's mine to above IP
E:\Documents and Settings\Bob>ping 69.12.99.109 -n 10
Pinging 69.12.99.109 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=91ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=89ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=89ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Reply from 69.12.99.109: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=49
Ping statistics for 69.12.99.109:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 89ms, Maximum = 93ms, Average = 90ms
This is what I roughly get from:
London based UK servers: 20ms
France: 30ms
Netherlands: 30ms
Germany: 30-40ms, depending where the server is.
You'll find if you've got a good DSL connection with fastpath enabled, you can take 5ms off what I get with VM.
Ignitionnet
10-03-2009, 17:22
Speed of light: 299,792,348m/s
Approx distance to USA: 5000km
Approx distance to USA: 5,000,000 meters
299,792,348 / 5000000 = 59.95
So, the minimum latency to USA is about 60ms, IF the equipment is operating at peak efficiency.
Yes, that's not really correct is it sir, remember that the ping times are a round trip so according to that we should never see below 160ms or so allowing for 1/3rd additional 'fibre bounce' effect UK to USA and back.
Transit providers give round trip SLAs around the 65ms mark between UK and USA, VM might be a bit higher due to fibre routing.
Here's the correct maths:
distance / c = latency
5,000,000 / 299,792,348 = 0.016678210879485156172164874601803 seconds
Result / 1,000 and tidied up for convenience = 16.6782 ms.
Multiple for round trip, 2 * 16.6782 = 33.3564ms is the time light would take to travel 5,000km and back.
This is not going to happen over fibre as light bounces along the core of the fibre increasing the round trip, and the fibre does not take a direct route.
HTH.
AbyssUnderground
10-03-2009, 17:27
True, but when gaming, don't most games use UDP? Which means it doesn't require a "ping" as such because it never gets a reply. Correct me if I'm wrong. :) And yes I did overlook that ping is a round trip too. :)
chickendippers
10-03-2009, 18:11
VM's international peering isn't the best; I can usually only manage 2Mb down from my servers in Texas which are easily capable of 30Mb.
VM's international peering isn't the best; I can usually only manage 2Mb down from my servers in Texas which are easily capable of 30Mb.
I used to be able to pull around 2-5Mbit down from a texas server which was pumping out 1gbit speeds.
VM's peering is stupidly atrocious :rolleyes:
Ignitionnet
10-03-2009, 18:20
True, but when gaming, don't most games use UDP? Which means it doesn't require a "ping" as such because it never gets a reply. Correct me if I'm wrong. :) And yes I did overlook that ping is a round trip too. :)
No - you need to fire off your request, but seeing the result so that you can react to it is also a bonus. UDP is in itself not a connection based protocol but applications running on it usually require 2 way traffic - if you check the latencies listed on games they are round trip.
Your maths was wrong it happens.
It's more VM's international transit, it's not the greatest and never has been.
10 10 ms 12 ms 13 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.250.229]
11 89 ms 85 ms 150 ms nyk-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.253.118]
I have worked for an ISP where that kind of London - NY latency would have caused alarms as it was outside SLA.
Also, not all of the journey is photonic. Which will also slow things down a bit.
nutellajunkie
11-03-2009, 19:31
haha I love all this, proving the facts :)
you guys are fun!
Ignitionnet
11-03-2009, 20:56
Also, not all of the journey is photonic. Which will also slow things down a bit.
Yep very true, the photonic -> electronic -> photonic conversions take a little while in between.
Oh for AmsIX and their photonic switching architecture.
How comes, any ping to any american server is above 100ms for me even ones on the east coast. [b]I thaught it was fibre, not copper phone wire *sigh*[b/]. I got about 60-70ms on my sky broadband connection. I dont have any problems with servers in france or germany.
Even on ADSL your international (infact all) communication from your exchange onwoods is fiber ;) (untill it gets to the other end when it then gose onto copper again...)
graf_von_anonym
12-03-2009, 03:29
Just out of curiousity what are your ping times to servers in China?
high
E:\Documents and Settings\Bob>ping 61.129.32.85 -n 10
Pinging 61.129.32.85 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=367ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=362ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=359ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=360ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=357ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=362ms TTL=114
Ping statistics for 61.129.32.85:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 357ms, Maximum = 367ms, Average = 359ms
high
E:\Documents and Settings\Bob>ping 61.129.32.85 -n 10
Pinging 61.129.32.85 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=367ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=362ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=359ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=360ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=357ms TTL=114
Reply from 61.129.32.85: bytes=32 time=362ms TTL=114
Ping statistics for 61.129.32.85:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 357ms, Maximum = 367ms, Average = 359ms
China and other asian countries always have high pings anyway, just-ping.com is a good site to compare your ping results from all over the world.
I know they always have high pings because of the distances involved. My cut-off point for not playing on a server is around 120ms. After 120ms I find it hard to predict where players are moving too.
graf_von_anonym
12-03-2009, 17:12
high
Sorry, I was being facetious. Maybe I should have made it clear my question was directed to the initiator of the thread, and rather than picking China I should have used Australia. I was wondering if picking somewhere that seemed further away would help them twig that there's a physical component to ping times.
Though in a few years we might be able to ping the Moon or Mars, and I'll bet that that's way too laggy for gaming.
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