Is it just me or? .....

[marko2002]

Hi guys, not entirely sure anyone will be able to help me here, but I've tried a few threads on the VM forums and to be honest nothing really happens or ever get's dealt with in the manner you would expect. Here's my problem.

I run a website from Dallas, US and I'm located in Scotland, UK - for the past few weeks I've noticed issues with page loads taking considerably longer. My first thought was our host, but they are a reputable bunch and so I contacted them, they did the necessary checks and confirmed everything their end is A OK.

I've since ran a number of tracert's to the server from here and noticed some are timing out. I've since also located another rather large site that seems to have the same path as me to the states and there site is not as "nippy" as it once was either.

Now, I realise this isn't necessarily the fault of VM because it seems to be outside their network, but my question is simply how, if at all, could I confirm once and for all that this is an issue with the "rest of the world", in this case it would appear to be 'internap' or am I totally barking up the wrong tree altogether?!. Someone's techincal knowledge would be greatly appreciated if possible as I'm even now struggling to upload via FTP to my site as the connection appears that poor!.

Here's one of the worst tracert's I managed to get:
Tracing route to freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 5 ms 6 ms 10.141.224.1
2 8 ms 5 ms 5 ms osr02uddi-ge310.network.virginmedia.net [80.3.17
.133]
3 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms uddi-core-1b-ge-010-0.network.virginmedia.net [8
0.3.16.129]
4 12 ms 34 ms 11 ms manc-bb-1b-so-320-0.network.virginmedia.net [213
.105.175.193]
5 16 ms 15 ms 20 ms nrth-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.64.21]
6 31 ms 40 ms 32 ms fran-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.81]
7 * 31 ms * cr1.fra003.internap.net [80.81.194.45]
8 31 ms 31 ms * ams003-fra003-2-cr1.ams003.internap.net [77.242.
206.221]
9 28 ms * 28 ms ams003-lon005-4-cr2.lon005.internap.net [77.242.
206.241]
10 113 ms 111 ms * bsn006-lon005-6-cr2.bsn006.internap.net [66.79.1
58.5]
11 * 113 ms * cr1-cr2.bsn006.internap.net [66.79.147.13]
12 132 ms 111 ms 111 ms bsn006-nym009-9-cr2.nym009.internap.net [66.79.1
58.10]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 128 ms * 128 ms phi004-wdc005-814-cr1.wdc005.internap.net [66.79
.147.18]
16 * 116 ms * cr2-cr1.wdc005.internap.net [66.79.146.202]
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 128 ms * 128 ms cr2-cr1.acs007.internap.net [66.79.147.2]
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 149 ms 148 ms 148 ms cr1-cr2.dal005.internap.net [66.79.147.185]
21 * 149 ms 150 ms dal005-dalext1-846-core3.ext1.dal.internap.net [
66.79.145.98]
22 * 150 ms * border3.tge3-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net [216.52.
191.22]
23 162 ms * * te1-2.cer02.dal01.networklayer.com [216.52.189.3
0]
24 * 146 ms 145 ms boreas.supportedns.com [173.192.14.194]
25 146 ms 145 ms 161 ms server.freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]

Trace complete.

and just now .....

Tracing route to freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.141.224.1
2 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms osr02uddi-ge310.network.virginmedia.net [80.3.17
.133]
3 7 ms 5 ms 5 ms uddi-core-1b-ge-010-0.network.virginmedia.net [8
0.3.16.129]
4 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms manc-bb-1b-so-320-0.network.virginmedia.net [213
.105.175.193]
5 31 ms 14 ms 15 ms nrth-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.64.21]
6 32 ms 32 ms 31 ms fran-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.81]
7 33 ms 33 ms 34 ms cr1.fra003.internap.net [80.81.194.45]
8 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms ams003-fra003-2-cr1.ams003.internap.net [77.242.
206.221]
9 31 ms 29 ms 37 ms ams003-lon005-4-cr2.lon005.internap.net [77.242.
206.241]
10 114 ms 112 ms 112 ms bsn006-lon005-6-cr2.bsn006.internap.net [66.79.1
58.5]
11 117 ms 113 ms 116 ms cr1-cr2.bsn006.internap.net [66.79.147.13]
12 113 ms 112 ms 119 ms bsn006-nym009-9-cr2.nym009.internap.net [66.79.1
58.10]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 156 ms 129 ms 137 ms phi004-wdc005-814-cr1.wdc005.internap.net [66.79
.147.18]
16 114 ms 111 ms 112 ms cr2-cr1.wdc005.internap.net [66.79.146.202]
17 129 ms 128 ms 128 ms acs007-wdc005-844-cr1.acs007.internap.net [66.79
.147.197]
18 135 ms 159 ms 125 ms cr2-cr1.acs007.internap.net [66.79.147.2]
19 148 ms 147 ms 148 ms acs007-dal005-841-cr2.dal005.internap.net [66.79
.147.190]
20 148 ms 156 ms 149 ms cr1-cr2.dal005.internap.net [66.79.147.185]
21 149 ms 163 ms 147 ms dal005-dalext1-846-core3.ext1.dal.internap.net [
66.79.145.98]
22 153 ms 142 ms 144 ms border3.tge3-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net [216.52.
191.22]
23 157 ms 159 ms 157 ms te1-2.cer02.dal01.networklayer.com [216.52.189.3
0]
24 158 ms 157 ms 158 ms po1.fcr05.dal01.networklayer.com [66.228.118.221
]
25 159 ms 159 ms 157 ms boreas.supportedns.com [173.192.14.194]
26 160 ms 159 ms 159 ms server.freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]

Trace complete.

[Paul]

The poor trace seems to indicate a possible issue at the point VM connects to Internap.

[marko2002]

Hi Paul, thanks for the quick response, what confuses me though is the second tracert shows the route timing out between internap nodes, the VM path goes through pretty stable from what I can see, this is why I was wondering if it's an internap issue and actually wondering if it's acceptable to see timeouts on a tracert at all - obviously the first is pretty unacceptable but the second ALWAYS times out at No 13 and No 14 no matter what time of day I peform a tracert.

[kwikbreaks]

I'm not sure if this will help or confuse.

I'm currently on a Vodafone mobile dongle and thought I'd give a tracert a go - latency on these things is abysmal but what is interesting (to me at least) is the my routining doesn't go through internap at all and that really cuts down on the hops. I get the timeout on everything as I think that router never responds to ICMP requests.

Tracing route to freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 287 ms 329 ms 338 ms 10.252.225.53
2 299 ms 381 ms 387 ms 10.206.64.82
3 359 ms 329 ms 400 ms 10.206.64.145
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 121 ms 139 ms 139 ms TenGigabitEthernet7-1.ar6.LON3.gblx.net [64.214.
144.121]
6 247 ms 249 ms 259 ms te3-6.bbr01.eq01.dal01.networklayer.com [64.215.
81.2]
7 241 ms 259 ms 259 ms po1.fcr05.dal01.networklayer.com [66.228.118.221
]
8 247 ms 249 ms 259 ms boreas.supportedns.com [173.192.14.194]
9 250 ms 269 ms 259 ms server.freewarebb.com [174.36.114.32]

Trace complete.

[marko2002]

Wow, that is some route, but your browsing must be shocking looking at the response times!

[kwikbreaks]

Surprisingly it's quite usable. UK pings are less but still maybe 150ms. It isn't really spritely enough for me to say if your site is unusually slow though.

I accessed my machine at home which is on VM and that goes through internap too which isn't surprising. I think you need to try to solicit the help of a couple of other people who aren't on VM but preferably still not on BT based ADSL which is frequently carp - Sky and O2 LLU would be good ones.

The timeouts don't really mean anything much as some routers just won't reply (like that vodafone one) but can sometimes indicate a busy one as they all treat ICMP as low priority and ignore it when busy.

[marko2002]

I was afraid the 2 timeouts might have been intentional which means my tracert doesn't really prove anything to anyone, my first tracert must have just been a fluke when the network was playing up, chances are I'll be lucky to catch this again. Thing is, when I was with BePro I was asked by a friend to fix their computer and as a matter of course I always download my own software from my site and I couldn't access it from my friends computer, they were on Virgin Media and this was something like a year ago, I remember specifically that Internap were coming up with tracert issues all over the place, I wonder can you or anyone else tell me if most ISP's use Internap or are there 'preferred' carriers - and if so are there any ISP's that use these 'preferred' carriers?
Cheers
Marko

[Paul]

I was wondering if it's an internap issue and actually wondering if it's acceptable to see timeouts on a tracert at all - obviously the first is pretty unacceptable but the second ALWAYS times out at No 13 and No 14 no matter what time of day I peform a tracert.
The fact that 13/14 always timeout is not significant - it simply means that equipment is not set to respond to ping requests. The only significant thing is the timeouts on the other steps, which start at hop 7, which appears to be the point you exit the VM network. When you do get a respnse the timings are about the same, so its as if some packets are simply being lost - which will not be good for performance. BTW, higher ping response times do not equate to poor speed.

[marko2002]

Thanks for the explanation Paul
Marko