ISP: Stem connect; issue with international latency

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chrisGolf

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Hi,

I'm with Stem Connect ISP. I had some latency issues with my work VPN in the UK;

I'm based in JHP - so expecting around 170ms latency to UK.

1st issue - i'm getting about +200ms to UK (VPN and other UK sites, like lon.hosted.co.za, also speedtest to coreix shows ~200ms)
2nd issue - see graph below - there is some load issues on their upstream providers - this is specific to my work VPN

Every day around 11am till about midnight, latency spikes, and there is packet loss.
1723104974543.png

Eventually the ISP said there are load issues on their NTT service providers; also wolcomm (Workonline) seems problematic

1723105224687.png

however - no ETR, no SLA to improve it - so I asked that they change my routing - this is what they replied with

Good day


Please note upstream advised that they are unable to influence outbound routing,

However the only solution is to use BGP communities to not advertise the prefixes to NTT or any of their other upstream. This option is only applicable/available to our business SLA paying clients that have static IP addresses allocated to them .

Regards
Click to expand...

I will eventually terminate my contract with them, as I'm paying around +R1000 for a 100/100 connection. which is a lot more than other ISPs out there.
(they were recommended as they "have good international peering" )

Anyway, is this typically how other ISPs respond? behave when encountering these type of issues?
(I doubt it - my recommendation is to stay away from STEM for residential use)

Kind Regards,
Chris
 
chrisGolf said:
Hi,

I'm with Stem Connect ISP. I had some latency issues with my work VPN in the UK;

I'm based in JHP - so expecting around 170ms latency to UK.

1st issue - i'm getting about +200ms to UK (VPN and other UK sites, like lon.hosted.co.za, also speedtest to coreix shows ~200ms)
2nd issue - see graph below - there is some load issues on their upstream providers - this is specific to my work VPN

Every day around 11am till about midnight, latency spikes, and there is packet loss.
View attachment 1749720

Eventually the ISP said there are load issues on their NTT service providers; also wolcomm (Workonline) seems problematic

View attachment 1749722

however - no ETR, no SLA to improve it - so I asked that they change my routing - this is what they replied with



I will eventually terminate my contract with them, as I'm paying around +R1000 for a 100/100 connection. which is a lot more than other ISPs out there.
(they were recommended as they "have good international peering" )

Anyway, is this typically how other ISPs respond? behave when encountering these type of issues?
(I doubt it - my recommendation is to stay away from STEM for residential use)

Kind Regards,
Chris
Click to expand...
WOLCOMM is Work Online same provider Amazon uses for a lot of transit on Warp (their free VPN) i haven't see anyone complain about warp being unstable.

Can you maybe post a full MTR so we can see local hops as well? You only showing international and problem could even be locally

NTT is also a big guy so doubt they having problems
 
chrisGolf said:
Hi,

I'm with Stem Connect ISP. I had some latency issues with my work VPN in the UK;

I'm based in JHP - so expecting around 170ms latency to UK.

1st issue - i'm getting about +200ms to UK (VPN and other UK sites, like lon.hosted.co.za, also speedtest to coreix shows ~200ms)
2nd issue - see graph below - there is some load issues on their upstream providers - this is specific to my work VPN

Every day around 11am till about midnight, latency spikes, and there is packet loss.
View attachment 1749720

Eventually the ISP said there are load issues on their NTT service providers; also wolcomm (Workonline) seems problematic

View attachment 1749722

however - no ETR, no SLA to improve it - so I asked that they change my routing - this is what they replied with



I will eventually terminate my contract with them, as I'm paying around +R1000 for a 100/100 connection. which is a lot more than other ISPs out there.
(they were recommended as they "have good international peering" )

Anyway, is this typically how other ISPs respond? behave when encountering these type of issues?
(I doubt it - my recommendation is to stay away from STEM for residential use)

Kind Regards,
Chris
Click to expand...
What is the VPN software you are using?
What is the device you have to connect to the Internet?
What do you use as a router?
 
r00igev@@r said:
What is the VPN software you are using?
What is the device you have to connect to the Internet?
What do you use as a router?
Click to expand...
VPN sw = forticlient
device = fibre ont? I have laptops/pc connected to the internet.
router = mikrotik

FYI - i'm monitoring from another device that is not connected to the vpn.
Just monitoring the latency to the vpn gateway.
 
not sure if I can post my company VPN details on an online forum, I'll post the second last hop;

83.231.221.26

1723125558428.png
 
Also hop 11 looks like it's being routed via France ? then back to UK?
 
r00igev@@r said:
Are you using DTLS on the VPN?
Click to expand...
Hi, not sure what that is.
but for now - I think we can exclude the VPN.
it's a straightforward latency check to 83.231.221.26.
I see you're getting around 176ms - which is what I'd expect, and using looking glasses on other ISPs, is also around 170ms.

So just annoyed with with my ISP.

some other tests;
ping to lon.hosted.co.za = +210ms
ping to uktest.cisp.co.za = 164ms

Not sure if there are some other UK tests?
 
chrisGolf said:
Hi, not sure what that is.
but for now - I think we can exclude the VPN.
it's a straightforward latency check to 83.231.221.26.
I see you're getting around 176ms - which is what I'd expect, and using looking glasses on other ISPs, is also around 170ms.

So just annoyed with with my ISP.

some other tests;
ping to lon.hosted.co.za = +210ms
ping to uktest.cisp.co.za = 164ms

Not sure if there are some other UK tests?
Click to expand...
If you VPN uses UDP it is better over International. So would help to check that.
 
chrisGolf said:
not sure if I can post my company VPN details on an online forum, I'll post the second last hop;

83.231.221.26

View attachment 1749813
Click to expand...

That IP is on NTT's network. NTT is a Tier 1 ISP they only peer with other Tier 1 ISP's so to reach that IP you need to transit through a tier 1 or have a private cross connect as a customer. Maybe Work online only has that cross connect in France hence the traffic is hair pinning in France and then back.
 
chrisGolf said:
Hi, not sure what that is.
but for now - I think we can exclude the VPN.
it's a straightforward latency check to 83.231.221.26.
I see you're getting around 176ms - which is what I'd expect, and using looking glasses on other ISPs, is also around 170ms.

So just annoyed with with my ISP.

some other tests;
ping to lon.hosted.co.za = +210ms
ping to uktest.cisp.co.za = 164ms

Not sure if there are some other UK tests?
Click to expand...
If you trace to one of our IPs it would use local peering and our transit to get to London.

Just more of an FYI.
 
So is there nothing my ISP can do? Unless I get a static IP ?
1723230459220.png
 
chrisGolf said:
So is there nothing my ISP can do? Unless I get a static IP ?
View attachment 1750100
Click to expand...
Heres mine on Openserve / Cool Ideas (wifi though)

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| unifi.home - 0 | 98 | 98 | 1 | 2 | 16 | 3 |
| No response from host - 100 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 100.99.2.194 - 0 | 98 | 98 | 4 | 6 | 31 | 9 |
| u1c-cust.coolideas.co.za - 0 | 98 | 98 | 4 | 6 | 30 | 7 |
| 100.98.1.183 - 0 | 98 | 98 | 162 | 164 | 178 | 165 |
| 81.52.186.253 - 0 | 98 | 98 | 163 | 164 | 171 | 165 |
| ntt-6.gw.opentransit.net - 0 | 98 | 98 | 162 | 166 | 197 | 165 |
| ae-0.r21.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net - 3 | 91 | 89 | 163 | 166 | 198 | 170 |
| ae-3.a02.londen14.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net - 0 | 98 | 98 | 164 | 165 | 182 | 169 |
| ae-1.a04.londen14.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net - 0 | 98 | 98 | 163 | 165 | 172 | 169 |
| 83.231.221.26 - 0 | 98 | 98 | 163 | 165 | 182 | 169 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
 
cavedog said:
That IP is on NTT's network. NTT is a Tier 1 ISP they only peer with other Tier 1 ISP's so to reach that IP you need to transit through a tier 1 or have a private cross connect as a customer. Maybe Work online only has that cross connect in France hence the traffic is hair pinning in France and then back.
Click to expand...
Thanks - so that is something to do with the routing on my ISP side? Can they not do anything about it? Or influence it any any? (referring to the backtracking to .FR ) - because as I can see other members have posted - they are also using .NTT tier 1 ISPs and there isn't an issue. (https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/thr...h-international-latency.1298886/post-33289810) - in any case, going to mention this to them ...
 
chrisGolf said:
in the heading, STEM connect, and also mentioned in my first post.
Click to expand...
Stem being your ISP, who is the underlying fibre provider. Openserve, Vumatel etc?

If Openserve for instance, you can trial out other ISPs to try narrow down where the issue lies.

As per your ref we don't use NTT, Orange would be our Upstream that would peer or buy capacity from NTT.
 
CrypticZA said:
You have local loss its 0.1 but that's a lot of packets on the test?

Also average ping to router of 1.8 is quite high. My average is about 0.6 and I have a cheap R500 Asus router
Click to expand...
Thanks, but I'm not after 2ms improvement. I have an old laptop that is sitting on the wireless running pingplotter. So I'm not to fazed about the 2ms improvement.

as an example, when UK traffic doesn't use the wierd NTT Tier1 routing - then I get something more preferable in the 160-170ms range - e.g. bankofengland.co.za

This looks like its using MS tier1 ISP ?
1723367341478.png

minimal packet loss, and stable ~165ms UK latency.

but then other UK sites - like my work VPN or redstation.co.uk - I can see the weird france routing. in this case, also going via Netherlands? (hop 12 to 14 ?)
1723368095097.png

bizarre?
 

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