This isn't exchange congestion, right?

S

sH3LLsH0K

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I contacted Afrihost support yesterday about high latency in the evenings. They asked me to do a bunch of trace routes and when I sent them, the rep told me my exchange is congested. But as far as I know, exchange congestion would mean the first hop after my router would have high ping, which wasn't the case in the tracerts I sent. Just look at these:

Code: 
Tracing route to www.isidingo.tv [197.96.40.225]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    23 ms    21 ms    20 ms  cpt-up1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.105]
  4    22 ms    21 ms    20 ms  169-1-21-66.ip.afrihost.co.za [169.1.21.66]
  5    22 ms    21 ms    20 ms  cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
  6    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  196-10-140-126.ixp.capetown [196.10.140.126]
  7    21 ms    21 ms    22 ms  mi-za-cpt-p7-te0-0-0-0.ip.isnet.net [168.209.6.12]
  8   139 ms   139 ms   140 ms  168.209.100.101
  9    37 ms    37 ms    38 ms  core1a-bry-te0-0-0-1.ip.isnet.net [168.209.100.78]
 10   152 ms   172 ms    62 ms  168.209.217.17
 11   165 ms   160 ms   150 ms  196.34.134.105
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13    37 ms    37 ms    37 ms  sdkafrica-dedicated.onsite.hosting.co.za [197.96.40.225]

Trace complete.

Code: 
Tracing route to www.jleague.jp [13.32.22.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *       25 ms    23 ms  cpt-up1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.105]
  4    21 ms    21 ms    22 ms  cpt-in1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.118]
  5    20 ms    20 ms    21 ms  cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
  6    21 ms    21 ms    20 ms  41.164.52.40
  7    54 ms    51 ms    47 ms  ix-ae-7-0.tcore2.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.165.25]
  8   177 ms   176 ms   191 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
  9   169 ms   170 ms   171 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.159.57]
 10   170 ms   171 ms   171 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.158.5]
 11   167 ms   167 ms   167 ms  if-ae-1-3.tcore1.SV8-Highbridge.as6453.net [80.231.158.30]
 12   176 ms   176 ms   175 ms  if-ae-19-2.tcore2.L78-London.as6453.net [80.231.138.22]
 13   166 ms   169 ms   166 ms  if-ae-15-2.tcore2.LDN-London.as6453.net [80.231.131.118]
 14   181 ms   176 ms   186 ms  ae4.cr1-lon1.ip4.gtt.net [141.136.99.73]
 15   187 ms   187 ms   187 ms  xe-4-2-0.cr0-vie2.ip4.gtt.net [89.149.183.137]
 16   189 ms   190 ms   191 ms  ip4.gtt.net [77.67.123.30]
 17   188 ms   188 ms   191 ms  52.93.38.134
 18   211 ms   192 ms   189 ms  52.93.38.143
 19   196 ms   193 ms   193 ms  176.32.124.89
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23   191 ms   192 ms   192 ms  13.32.22.41

Trace complete.

Code: 
Tracing route to kleague.com [211.172.254.151]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    23 ms    21 ms    20 ms  cpt-up1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.105]
  4    24 ms    21 ms    21 ms  169-1-21-66.ip.afrihost.co.za [169.1.21.66]
  5    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
  6    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  41.164.52.40
  7    22 ms    21 ms    20 ms  ix-ae-7-0.tcore2.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.165.25]
  8   307 ms   307 ms   311 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
  9   299 ms   301 ms   300 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.159.93]
 10   300 ms   300 ms   300 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.158.5]
 11   296 ms   297 ms   296 ms  if-ae-1-3.tcore1.SV8-Highbridge.as6453.net [80.231.158.30]
 12     *        *      339 ms  if-ae-6-2.thar1.NJY-Newark.as6453.net [80.231.138.18]
 13   293 ms   294 ms     *     if-ae-1-3.thar2.NJY-Newark.as6453.net [216.6.57.2]
 14   293 ms   293 ms     *     if-ae-14-14.tcore2.NTO-New-York.as6453.net [66.198.111.9]
 15   293 ms   292 ms   293 ms  if-ae-8-2.tcore1.NTO-New-York.as6453.net [63.243.128.69]
 16   407 ms   414 ms   393 ms  if-ae-12-2.tcore1.SQN-San-Jose.as6453.net [63.243.128.29]
 17   294 ms   295 ms   295 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore2.SQN-San-Jose.as6453.net [63.243.205.2]
 18   294 ms   294 ms   294 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PDI-Palo-Alto.as6453.net [64.86.21.2]
 19   295 ms   295 ms   302 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.PDI-Palo-Alto.as6453.net [66.198.127.1]
 20   305 ms   314 ms   295 ms  66.198.127.130
 21   295 ms   295 ms   295 ms  1.208.144.49
 22   437 ms   438 ms   424 ms  1.208.144.173
 23   435 ms   436 ms   430 ms  1.208.105.42
 24   421 ms   439 ms   436 ms  1.208.105.245
 25   459 ms   444 ms   460 ms  117.52.0.122
 26   438 ms     *      437 ms  211.233.33.147
 27   459 ms   477 ms   474 ms  211.174.52.102
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.

I'll probably get an account with Crystal Web or something to test if latency is better with a different ISP, but I'd like to make sure Afrihost support is talking *** like I suspect before spending anything.
 
Definitely not exchange congestion. Whoever told you that, is a moron. But then again, seeing who's involved it's expected.

It's like the default go-to answer from crappy ISPs when they're too lazy to dig.

Something's up here, from hop 7 to 8:
Code: 
  7    22 ms    21 ms    20 ms  ix-ae-7-0.tcore2.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.165.25]
  8   307 ms   307 ms   311 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
 
Figured as much. Is it a routing issue? Something that can be fixed by switching ISP? I'm not too clued up on networking stuff, sorry. :D
 
Ho3n3r said:
Something's up here, from hop 7 to 8:
Code: 
  7    22 ms    21 ms    20 ms  ix-ae-7-0.tcore2.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.165.25]
  8   307 ms   307 ms   311 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
Click to expand...

That's not actually a reason for concern. All it means is that that particular router couldn't send the ICMP TTL exceeded message back to OP's PC via a local route. As the RTTs from that router roughly match the RTTs from the last AS 6453 router in each of the traceroutes, I'd guess that ICMP tunneling is the cause. See diagrams and explanation here:

http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Routing/what-does-quot-icmp-tunneling-quot-mean-in-mpls-vpn/td-p/164284

I can't actually see anything in any of OP's traceroutes that suggests a problem. All of the final RTTs are reasonable. Cape Town to Joburg in < 40 ms; Cape Town to Europe in < 200 ms; Cape Town to South Korea via Europe and the US in < 500 ms.
 
Last edited:
drs said:
I can't actually see anything in any of OP's traceroutes that suggests a problem. All of the final RTTs are reasonable. Cape Town to Joburg in < 40 ms; Cape Town to Europe in < 200 ms; Cape Town to South Korea via Europe and the US in < 500 ms.
Click to expand...

What about that last tracert to kleague? I tried to play Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 last night right after doing these - my pings in GW2 were anywhere between 230ms and 400ms, and D3 280ms to 380ms. Gaming with latency like that is frustrating as hell.
 
sH3LLsH0K said:
What about that last tracert to kleague?
Click to expand...

That traceroute shows 1) that you're trying to communicate with a computer that's in South Korea, and 2) that the route to Korea that your ISP, the Korean ISP and the ISPs in between have mutually chosen goes westwards all the way around the globe. Once you accept those points, an RTT approaching 500 ms is inevitable, because of the speed of light in a fibre and the number of routers involved.

It would better (perhaps 300 ms RTT) if there were a route between your ISP and the Korean ISP that went eastwards to Korea, but South African consumer ISPs generally don't have good connectivity to Asia (mostly because there's far more demand for connectivity to Europe and the US), and the Korean ISP doesn't seem to have particularly good connectivity to Europe.

The lesson from that traceroute is don't try to play games hosted on servers located in South Korea.

It's possible that you'll have experienced other problems accessing servers elsewhere in the world, but those aren't revealed by that particular traceroute. A traceroute to the server in question at the time of the high latency would be more informative.
 
Code: 
  8   307 ms   307 ms   311 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
  9   299 ms   301 ms   300 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.159.93]
 10   300 ms   300 ms   300 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.158.5]

Surely these are considered high? Especially compared to:

Code: 
  8   177 ms   176 ms   191 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.253]
  9   169 ms   170 ms   171 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.159.57]
 10   170 ms   171 ms   171 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.158.5]

Regardless, the trace routes I listed were the ones Afrihost support asked me to - I'm not trying to play Korean games lol. I'll try ones to the servers for those specific games tonight through both my Afrihost account and Crystal Web, if I end up signing up with them.
 
sH3LLsH0K said:
Surely these are considered high? Especially compared to:
Click to expand...

In the traceroute to kleague, Tata (AS 6453) carries the traffic as far as Palo Alto, so the ICMP responses from Tata's Lisbon routers have to be tunneled all the way to their Palo Alto routers first before being returned to your PC. In the traceroute to jleague, Tata hands the traffic to GTT in London, so the ICMP response from Tata's Lisbon routers have to be tunneled only as far as London before being returned to your PC. Since London is closer to you than Palo Alto, the RTT is less.

sH3LLsH0K said:
Regardless, the trace routes I listed were the ones Afrihost support asked me to - I'm not trying to play Korean games lol. I'll try ones to the servers for those specific games tonight through both my Afrihost account and Crystal Web, if I end up signing up with them.
Click to expand...

That's going to give you much more relevant information.
 
Sorry, been a busy week. Only got a chance to test now:

Code: 
Tracing route to 185.60.112.157 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *       21 ms    20 ms  cpt-up1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.105]
  4    22 ms    21 ms    22 ms  cpt-up2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.106]
  5   124 ms   124 ms   132 ms  cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
  6    22 ms    21 ms    21 ms  41.164.52.40
  7    37 ms    41 ms    42 ms  ix-ae-7-0.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net [41.206.164.53]
  8   281 ms   277 ms   280 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.159.101]
  9   333 ms   330 ms   330 ms  if-ae-7-2.tcore2.WV6-Madrid.as6453.net [80.231.159.30]
 10   175 ms   174 ms   179 ms  if-ae-11-2.tcore1.WV6-Madrid.as6453.net [80.231.91.65]
 11   299 ms   304 ms   302 ms  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net [80.231.200.5]
 12   175 ms   176 ms   175 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore1.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net [80.231.217.1]
 13   175 ms   175 ms   174 ms  if-ae-8-1600.tcore1.PYE-Paris.as6453.net [80.231.217.6]
 14   175 ms   177 ms   179 ms  if-ae-11-2.tcore1.PVU-Paris.as6453.net [80.231.153.49]
 15   175 ms   175 ms   186 ms  80.231.153.66
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17   296 ms   298 ms   303 ms  BLIZZARD-EN.ear2.Paris1.Level3.net [212.73.205.158]
 18   305 ms   317 ms   316 ms  37.244.9.33
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20   318 ms   306 ms   293 ms  185.60.112.157

Trace complete.

300-330ms ping in Diablo 3. This is supposedly the server IP as per Blizzard's support site.

EDIT: Left WinMTR running for a bit

Code: 
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |

|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

|                             192.168.1.1 -    0 |  673 |  673 |    0 |    0 |    1 |    0 |

|                   No response from host -  100 |  135 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |

|                   cpt-up1.ip.adsl.co.za -   24 |  349 |  267 |    0 |   21 |   43 |   21 |

|                   cpt-up2.ip.adsl.co.za -    1 |  658 |  654 |   20 |   22 |   48 |   21 |

|                  cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za -    2 |  630 |  619 |   29 |  118 |  277 |  115 |

|                            41.164.52.40 -    1 |  662 |  659 |   20 |   22 |   60 |   22 |

|ix-ae-7-0.tcore1.KLT-Cape-Town.as6453.net -    1 |  662 |  659 |   20 |   37 |  118 |   55 |

|  if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PV9-Lisbon.as6453.net -   12 |  464 |  411 |  185 |  266 |  307 |  229 |

|  if-ae-7-2.tcore2.WV6-Madrid.as6453.net -    7 |  542 |  509 |  264 |  319 |  459 |  319 |

| if-ae-11-2.tcore1.WV6-Madrid.as6453.net -    1 |  658 |  654 |  173 |  175 |  188 |  175 |

|if-ae-5-2.tcore2.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net -    3 |  618 |  604 |  183 |  284 |  423 |  265 |

|if-ae-2-2.tcore1.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net -    1 |  662 |  659 |  174 |  175 |  191 |  177 |

|if-ae-8-1600.tcore1.PYE-Paris.as6453.net -    1 |  654 |  649 |  174 |  175 |  194 |  177 |

|  if-ae-11-2.tcore1.PVU-Paris.as6453.net -    1 |  662 |  659 |  173 |  176 |  215 |  175 |

|                           80.231.153.66 -    1 |  662 |  659 |  174 |  176 |  203 |  175 |

|        ae-1-3102.ear2.Paris1.Level3.net -  100 |  136 |    1 |    0 |  176 |  176 |  176 |

|      BLIZZARD-EN.ear2.Paris1.Level3.net -    1 |  650 |  644 |  175 |  277 |  318 |  267 |

|                             37.244.9.33 -    7 |  542 |  509 |  221 |  305 |  478 |  303 |

|                   No response from host -  100 |  135 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |

|                          185.60.112.157 -    1 |  658 |  654 |    0 |  207 |  314 |  202 |

|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
 
Last edited:
Update: ping was at 300 in Blizzard games again last night so I ran Zertop's line tool and got this:

Code: 
Zertop's LineTool Results
Date/Time: Sun Apr 09 20:15:05 CAT 2017

Basic Report:

Your packet loss was 0%.
Your average ping was 19ms.
Your maximum ping was 20ms.

Looking at your average ping, your line seems to be running perfectly.
It seems that your maximum ping is also good. If there are any issues, they most probably lie with your ISP

Signed up for a WebAfrica account and immediately noticed improvement - was able to play Overwatch with 180ms ping. Will check if it stays like that on weekday evenings, but this is definitely looking like Afrihost support was talking crap.

Thanks for the help, guys.
 
Are you on the Welgedacht exchange by any chance? I came here to post about a very similar issue that I have been experiencing and I wonder whether it is related. I am also trying to play Diablo 3 and have been experiencing lots of latency (last night was particularly bad) and frequent disconnects from games. I got telkom to look at my line and according to them everything is fine in terms of line quality.

I have been experiencing this problem for a while and I have accounts with both Afrihost and Webafrica and I experience the exact same problem with both. Sometimes switching between them helps for a bit but on the long run they both give the same issue. I have also tried some other ISP and get the same issue.

Some things I am wondering about: What is the 2nd hop in your tracert which times out and gives no IP? (I see the same thing in my trace and not sure whether this is a problem). Why is the ping to the 3rd hop 20ms? For me this was around 2ms in the past (which would make sense to a Cape Town router) but now it ranges from 20ms to 30ms.

I expect the ping to become progressively more the more hops you have but this is not the case (I see the same in my traces):
4 22 ms 21 ms 22 ms cpt-up2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.106]
5 124 ms 124 ms 132 ms cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
6 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 41.164.52.40
How is this possible?
 
Thanks, that explains why it was so bad last night. I've had the problem for a while though which was why I got Telkom to look at my line last week. I'm frustrated trying to understand whether the problem lies with Telkom or the ISP - I'm leaning towards Telkom because I have the same problem after switching between several ISPs. If it's Telkom how do I get them to fix it? They already closed the call I logged last week and I still have the same problem.
 
Netless said:
Are you on the Welgedacht exchange by any chance?
Click to expand...

Netless said:
Some things I am wondering about: What is the 2nd hop in your tracert which times out and gives no IP? (I see the same thing in my trace and not sure whether this is a problem). Why is the ping to the 3rd hop 20ms? For me this was around 2ms in the past (which would make sense to a Cape Town router) but now it ranges from 20ms to 30ms.
Click to expand...

I actually have no idea what exchange I'm on. The 2nd hop used to show back when I had massive latency issues on the WSBR exchange, but the Telkom rep here supposedly moved me to a different exchange months ago (which I'm inclined to believe since it fixed the problems then). FWIW, I always had at least 10ms on the 2nd hop before they moved me, so it's probably just a further exchange? I stay in Retreat, Cape Town.

Netless said:
I expect the ping to become progressively more the more hops you have but this is not the case (I see the same in my traces):
4 22 ms 21 ms 22 ms cpt-up2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.106]
5 124 ms 124 ms 132 ms cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
6 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 41.164.52.40
How is this possible?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that also seemed weird to me. Didn't experience anything like that at all with WebAfrica last night though. Hopefully it stays that way, but I'll see over the course of the next few days I guess.
 
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