International ping times have to gone to hell since last Friday. For your enjoyment, ping 66.249.89.99 (a Google server). If you're lucky enough to have an uncrippled 'unshaped' account (or on a leased line) you should get about 250ms - always. But since last Friday ping times have been consistently around 600ms.
Worse is the packet-loss. It is currently at 2% which is tolerable, but has peaked up to 20% since the Internet lost its legs last week.
As I work on UK-based PC on VNC over VPN, I'm particularly susceptible to latency and hugely affected by any packet loss.
At 5% packet loss you're better off using satellite-based services owing to the delays caused TCP retransmission. When it comes to TCP, your connection speed is roughly correlated to the speed of the slowest packet. At 10% packet loss, it's time to buy yourself a modem. At 20% you may as well start tying little notes to pigeons.
So, basically my job sucks at the moment. Most concerning is the complete denial that there is a problem. The SAiX noticeboard is worryingly devoid of any "Internation latency intolerable" messages. Bunch of muppets.
Usually, the ping times are very consistent. About 250ms, with variation of +-15ms. By the way the pings are swinging so wildly (600 +- 150ms), I reckon that we're close to the limit of international bandwidth. These problems also disappear at night further backing up this theory. I'd be less worried if I knew it was ADSL users that are affected, but no-one I know can get consistent sub 300 anymore.
Knowing Telkom though, we'll have to wait until it gets a lot worse before it gets any better.
Worse is the packet-loss. It is currently at 2% which is tolerable, but has peaked up to 20% since the Internet lost its legs last week.
As I work on UK-based PC on VNC over VPN, I'm particularly susceptible to latency and hugely affected by any packet loss.
At 5% packet loss you're better off using satellite-based services owing to the delays caused TCP retransmission. When it comes to TCP, your connection speed is roughly correlated to the speed of the slowest packet. At 10% packet loss, it's time to buy yourself a modem. At 20% you may as well start tying little notes to pigeons.
So, basically my job sucks at the moment. Most concerning is the complete denial that there is a problem. The SAiX noticeboard is worryingly devoid of any "Internation latency intolerable" messages. Bunch of muppets.
Usually, the ping times are very consistent. About 250ms, with variation of +-15ms. By the way the pings are swinging so wildly (600 +- 150ms), I reckon that we're close to the limit of international bandwidth. These problems also disappear at night further backing up this theory. I'd be less worried if I knew it was ADSL users that are affected, but no-one I know can get consistent sub 300 anymore.
Knowing Telkom though, we'll have to wait until it gets a lot worse before it gets any better.
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