Understanding Adsl in SA and Troubleshooting Tools

I would take issue with your statement :-
DNS' in the router settings affects your adsl latency/speed so if you in Durban and you have Cape Town as your dns it will affect your adsl latency/speed since any data transfered(uploaded) or downloaded has to go through Cape Town first before going out Internationally or Locally

DNS is a Domain Name Server, which is only used during the process to find and IP Address {eg 123.234.132.213} from a Domain Name {eg www.google.com} So whilst it is true that if a DNS is situated far away your DNS lookup may take slightly longer, it would not affect the actual traffic. Once your host has resolved the IP address of the destination host the traffic is routed via the shortest possible path to the destination. Thus the location of the DNS will only affect the latency of DNS lookups, not all traffic.
 
Here are a couple of useful tools available on most systems.
On windows there is a utility called "PathPing" it is like Traceroute on Steroids, Not only does it find each hop on the path it also tests the latency on each hop.
So if you suspect you are getting less than optimal throughput, Pathping can tell you where the problem might be.
It first identifies all the hops, and then spends several minutes testing the hop latencies, and then produces a report like this:-

C:\Documents and Settings\user>pathping www.mybroadband.co.za

Tracing route to www.mybroadband.co.za [197.242.89.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 triumph.abc.lan [192.168.42.148]
1 myway.abc.lan [192.168.42.254]
2 197-87-143-1.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.87.143.1]
3 197-84-96-162.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.96.162]
4 197-84-2-2.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.2.2]
5 197-84-5-226.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.5.226]
6 197-84-7-5.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.7.5]
7 africainx.ct1.napafrica.net [196.46.25.7]
8 CORE.GP-CN-HET-MEE-1.TO.GP-MR-VOD-MEE-1.DFA.P2P.10G.za.africainx.net [41.84.12.151]
9 41-66-132-242-f2.HET001-CPE-1-to-GP-CN-HET-MEE-1.africainx.net [41.66.132.242]
10 core-access-switch1.jnb1.host-h.net [197.189.193.1]
11 row-access-switch1-row7-8.jnb1.host-h.net [197.189.193.39]
12 41.203.24.42
13 www.mybroadband.co.za [197.242.89.170]

Computing statistics for 325 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 triumph.jotrago.lan [192.168.42.148]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 7ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% milliways.jotrago.lan [192.168.42.254]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 20ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197-87-143-1.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.87.143.1]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 36ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197-84-96-162.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.96.162]
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 29ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197-84-2-2.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.2.2]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 33ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197-84-5-226.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.5.226]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 29ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197-84-7-5.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.7.5]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 37ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% africainx.ct1.napafrica.net [196.46.25.7]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 --- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% CORE.GP-CN-HET-MEE-1.TO.GP-MR-VOD-MEE-1.DFA.P2P.10G.za.africainx.net [41.8
4.12.151]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 55ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 41-66-132-242-f2.HET001-CPE-1-to-GP-CN-HET-MEE-1.africainx.net [41.66.132.
242]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 60ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% core-access-switch1.jnb1.host-h.net [197.189.193.1]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 56ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% row-access-switch1-row7-8.jnb1.host-h.net [197.189.193.39]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 54ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 41.203.24.42
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 58ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 197.242.89.170

Trace complete.



You can see the delay for each hop and determine whihc is the slowest link (core-access-switch1.jnb1.host-h.net [197.189.193.1])

On many Linux flavours a similar utility is "TracePath"

Happy pinging
 
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