A more specific "Which ISP should I choose"

[KruiserX]

Hi,

I'm currently have 100/100 Axxess/Frogfoot account, I can't really complain except for the international throughput of late (never more than 40Mbps down but 90+Mbps for upload). I'm located in Cape Town (openserve and frogfoot fibre available) and latency is great to europe, 150ms to fdcservers.net in London. To rest of the world not so great, my latency to Miami, FL on Axxess/Frogfoot is 252ms where transit provider like angola cables promises 163ms. Similiar going to the east, 250ms to penang, malaysia where penang on safe is supposed to 46ms (+40ms to Cape Town).

What I'm after, if any community members who are with other ISP's on frogfoot/openserve, can help me take some speedtests from other ISP's to various locations in the world to see what ISP uses all optimised routes out of SA (if there is such an ISP)

First test a baseline to MyBB

MyBroadband Speed Test

Speed test result: Latency: 3ms | Download: 90.22Mbps | Upload: 94.59Mbps | Provider: Axxess Networks

speedtest.mybroadband.co.za

Ping 3ms
Download 90.22Mbps
Upload 94.59Mbps

London, FDCServers.net


Miami, FDCServer

Penang, MyKRIS Asia Sdn Bhd

Fortaleza, Wirelink Telecom

Luanda, Angola Cables


I'll try and keep this table updated.
Format: ms/Mbps Download/Mbps Upload
Best latency: Green Text
Worst Latency: Red Text

ISP/Provider?Speed	MyBB	London	Miami	Penang	Fortaleza	Luanda
Axxess/Frogfoot/100/100	3/90/94	149/19/94	252/14/94	251/5/91	349/32/94	40/94/94
Webafrica/OpenServe/20/10	14/18/9	160/8/9	260/5/6	274/1/5		51/17/9

Thanks

 

[DapperDanMan]

I can't really complain except for the international throughput of late

Packet loss?

By the way, wouldn't you have to compare your connection test results to ISP's that are not on the LinkAfrica customer list?

 

[KruiserX]

Packet loss?

By the way, wouldn't you have to compare your connection test results to ISP's that are not on the LinkAfrica customer list?

No packet loss at all, just poor download speeds (uploads are always 90+) and I'm not routed via JHB hence the 3ms to Mybb CPT speedtest server.

As for the LinkAfrica thing, I would like to believe that the different ISP's all use their own different breakout internationally (be it on the same cables but using say HE or Angola Cables). I'm looking for an ISP that routes Asia via SAFE, the Americas via SACS and Europe via WACS/SAT-3 (which to the mybb article promised 60ms to portugal). Really keen to know if there are ISP's that do effort in optimising routes out of SA.

 

[CrypticZA]

No packet loss at all, just poor download speeds (uploads are always 90+).

As for the LinkAfrica thing, I would like to believe that the different ISP's all use their own different breakout internationally (be it on the same cables but using say HE or Angola Cables). I'm looking for an ISP that routes Asia via SAFE, the Americas via SACS and Europe via WACS/SAT-3 (which to the mybb article promised 60ms to portugal). Really keen to know if there are ISP's that do effort in optimising routes out of SA.

No ISP uses SACS and SAFE ( that I know of) they both very expensive to use and create a lot of routing problems. I'm with Cool Ideas and they have capacity on SACS (currently) and it's given them more than a few headaches I'm sure they will agree. Vox also have SACS capacity but their routing is not very good from what I've seen... And Websquad has SAFE if I recall. Using these other cables makes routing very difficult though because take Amazon traffic for example, it gets handed over to Amazon in Cape Town for example so they carry the traffic to their servers, same with Google and they don't use these fancy cables. Then you got other problems where games like Call Of Duty release huge patches and suddenly their servers start serving it from SACS/SAFE and it uses up all the ISPs capacity because the game company doesn't know how to release compressed small patches. I have access to SAFE via NordVPN but obviously it's not very well optimized but i get 220ms from Cape Town to South Korea and then 140ms to Brazil via SACS and 140 to UK

 

[websquadza]

Packet loss?

By the way, wouldn't you have to compare your connection test results to ISP's that are not on the LinkAfrica customer list?

How does Link Africa have anything to do with this? They’re a L2 last mile provider. ISPs use their network to deliver last mile services like FTTH and FTTB in different areas.

No packet loss at all, just poor download speeds (uploads are always 90+) and I'm not routed via JHB hence the 3ms to Mybb CPT speedtest server.

As for the LinkAfrica thing, I would like to believe that the different ISP's all use their own different breakout internationally (be it on the same cables but using say HE or Angola Cables). I'm looking for an ISP that routes Asia via SAFE, the Americas via SACS and Europe via WACS/SAT-3 (which to the mybb article promised 60ms to portugal). Really keen to know if there are ISP's that do effort in optimising routes out of SA.

Your results definitely look like last mile packet loss or retransmits of some kind. The higher the latency, the lower your throughput. I’d do a little investigation there- changing ISPs will give you the same results.

With regards to routing- SACS has little benefit as most tier 1s (global ISPs like Telia, Cogent etc) don’t optimise their routes to Fortaleza or other linked destinations and seem to favour return paths via the EU. This will mature in time and the benefit will become worthwhile. Europe (London) is always 140-odd ms or more away via WACS. No shorter route, yet (Google are cooking up a route with no cut ins as far as I remember). For Asia, SAFE is a good bet, we’re using it at the moment. SGIX and HKIX are mature exchanges, so great peering locations.

No ISP uses SACS and SAFE ( that I know of) they both very expensive to use and create a lot of routing problems. I'm with Cool Ideas and they have capacity on SACS (currently) and it's given them more than a few headaches I'm sure they will agree. Vox also have SACS capacity but their routing is not very good from what I've seen... And Websquad has SAFE if I recall. Using these other cables makes routing very difficult though because take Amazon traffic for example, it gets handed over to Amazon in Cape Town for example so they carry the traffic to their servers, same with Google and they don't use these fancy cables. Then you got other problems where games like Call Of Duty release huge patches and suddenly their servers start serving it from SACS/SAFE and it uses up all the ISPs capacity because the game company doesn't know how to release compressed small patches. I have access to SAFE via NordVPN but obviously it's not very well optimized but i get 220ms from Cape Town to South Korea and then 140ms to Brazil via SACS and 140 to UK

As mentioned above. The global scale cloud providers also complicate matters somewhat by peering at major exchanges globally and carrying all their own traffic everywhere. There are many pros to this as it sets incredible performance benchmarks though not always latency optimised. AWS, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are buying up subsea cables and capacity at mind numbing capacities and rates- and they want to make sure their traffic goes where they want it to go.. It makes controlling flows in and out of their networks and steering traffic increasingly difficult and negates shorter routes which they otherwise overlook.

 

[callvm]

Web Africa / OpenServe 20/10 fibre (over wifi):

Reference - CPT, Webafrica



Luanda, ZAP (couldn't find Angola cables)



London, fdcservers.net



Miami, fdcservers.net



Penang, MyKRIS Asia Sdn Bhd



Pretty kek

 

[KruiserX]

For Asia, SAFE is a good bet, we’re using it at the moment. SGIX and HKIX are mature exchanges, so great peering locations.

What does latency look like to SGIX and HKIX via safe from a gaming perspective. I can live with sub-200ms for something like pubg and would open up a massive community to me.

 

[websquadza]

What does latency look like to SGIX and HKIX via safe from a gaming perspective. I can live with sub-200ms for something like pubg and would open up a massive community to me.

You can check our looking glass: lg.as328137.net - some of the gaming servers sit on the above global clouds, so they always favour their own routes back to SA (negating SAFE). But others advertise in Asia and take advantage of the shorter route.