Routes to SG and changes to routes

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Routes to SG and changes to routes

slingynz

154 posts

Master Geek

#152147 17-Sep-2014 17:26

How long would you typically expect a route change request to get processed?

I submitted a ticket 9 days ago about the good route (130ms) to login.worldoftanks.asia, changing to the not so good route (180ms).
Yesterday, it went downhill even further to the bad route (230ms).

I have been running WTFast since I noticed the initial route change, and it has managed to keep a stable ping of ~130ms, indicating that the good route must be out there somewhere.

When I was with TCL/Vodafone, this type of request would typically take less than 1 day. So, what's up?

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BigPipe

#1132201 19-Sep-2014 15:43

Hi, we typically don't have direct control over routes, using GGI. Although we can make requests etc, and raise issues (which is what this sounds like)

We are aware of some work that has been done over the last few days by Vocus to fix up some routing stuff that has been affecting lots of ISPs recently - so that may be why you have seen some funky routing. It's not one route specifically, but rather part of a bigger issues. I heard yesterday it should be fixed now. Is that the case for you? If not, could you let me know and I will follow up.

cheers

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slingynz

154 posts

Master Geek

#1136997 24-Sep-2014 22:24

BigPipeNZ: Hi, we typically don't have direct control over routes, using GGI. Although we can make requests etc, and raise issues (which is what this sounds like)

We are aware of some work that has been done over the last few days by Vocus to fix up some routing stuff that has been affecting lots of ISPs recently - so that may be why you have seen some funky routing. It's not one route specifically, but rather part of a bigger issues. I heard yesterday it should be fixed now. Is that the case for you? If not, could you let me know and I will follow up.

cheers

It hasn't improved. My last email from support was on 18 Sept.

5 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms x1-1-1-201.akbr6.global-gateway.net.nz [122.56.118.85]
6 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms ae5-2.akbr7.global-gateway.net.nz [210.55.202.213]
7 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms ae1-10.tkbr12.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.37]
8 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms xe0-1-0.sebr1.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.14]
9 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms ae1-10.sebr2.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.242]
10 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms xe-3-1-0.a00.sydnau02.au.ra.gin.ntt.net [202.68.66.173]
11 29 ms 28 ms 28 ms xe-3-1-0.r00.sydnau02.au.bb.gin.ntt.net [202.68.64.214]
12 145 ms 144 ms 144 ms as-0.r22.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.6.109]
13 210 ms 208 ms 208 ms ae-5.r21.sngpsi05.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.7.39]
14 208 ms 208 ms 208 ms ae-13.r00.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.74]
15 216 ms 215 ms 216 ms 116.51.26.146
16 213 ms 210 ms 210 ms sg2-n5596-fe-1-vl231.wargaming.net [92.223.116.163]
17 212 ms 211 ms 208 ms sg2-sl-a65.worldoftanks.sg [92.223.16.65]

hio77

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#1137014 24-Sep-2014 22:35

worth pointing out, this also affects snap.

travels over netgate to that worldoftanks sg, so the same route as above.

im not an active player, so it doesnt particularly phase me, except for the fact that worldoftanks used to be a pretty good metric.

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Regs

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Snowflake

#1137118 25-Sep-2014 09:11

the route that gives you only 130ms is via the SEA-ME-WE 3 undersea cable that runs from Perth to Singapore via Indonesia. This is a very low capacity cable, e.g. compared to Southern Cross, and it is significantly more expensive than other routes. There is also no redundancy as we found out a year or so ago when it broke and was out of action for a few months forcing all traffic to reroute.

There is a good chance your routes will never get back to what you had - the traffic via sea-me-we 3 may be too expensive for anything but commercial services now. I know that Microsoft (and probably others) pay extra to buy capacity on this cable and have their traffic (office 365, crm, azure etc) go via this optimal route.

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Talkiet

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#1137140 25-Sep-2014 09:52

Slower routes don't always mean something's broken, and therefore, there may be no need to 'fix'.

There are many reasons traffic may not be taking the shortest route somewhere. Roading analogies again come in useful. If every single person took the shortest route in Auckland to work at peak time, there would be a LOT of wasted roading infrastructure not being used and the shortest routes would get congested, causing even bigger issues. Things work best when the traffic spreads itself around.

Internet - Same deal.

Cheers _ N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

slingynz

154 posts

Master Geek

#1137359 25-Sep-2014 12:30

Regs: the route that gives you only 130ms is via the SEA-ME-WE 3 undersea cable that runs from Perth to Singapore via Indonesia. This is a very low capacity cable, e.g. compared to Southern Cross, and it is significantly more expensive than other routes. There is also no redundancy as we found out a year or so ago when it broke and was out of action for a few months forcing all traffic to reroute.

There is a good chance your routes will never get back to what you had - the traffic via sea-me-we 3 may be too expensive for anything but commercial services now. I know that Microsoft (and probably others) pay extra to buy capacity on this cable and have their traffic (office 365, crm, azure etc) go via this optimal route.

Yes I'm aware the good route is smw3, when it was cut I don't recall vodafone routing via japan, it used the not so good route (possibly AAG).
Considering Bigpipe love to say they spend a great amount more on international bandwidth than any other provider (per sub), I'd hazard a guess it isn't a money thing.

Even if it was, why not use PBR on priority traffic to send it via a different upstream provider that uses smw3? Voice and gaming bandwidth is insignificant.

Talkiet: Slower routes don't always mean something's broken, and therefore, there may be no need to 'fix'.
There are many reasons traffic may not be taking the shortest route somewhere. Roading analogies again come in useful. If every single person took the shortest route in Auckland to work at peak time, there would be a LOT of wasted roading infrastructure not being used and the shortest routes would get congested, causing even bigger issues. Things work best when the traffic spreads itself around.

Internet - Same deal.

Cheers _ N

I hope you're joking. A 70% increase in latency on what should be high priority traffic is "broken" and it needs to be fixed.

No need for strawman roading analogies.
Real time application data should get prioritized routing, I couldn't care less what happens to other data.

Talkiet

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#1137367 25-Sep-2014 12:38

slingynz: [snip]
I hope you're joking. A 70% increase in latency on what should be high priority traffic is "broken" and it needs to be fixed.

No need for strawman roading analogies.
Real time application data should get prioritized routing, I couldn't care less what happens to other data.

Hang on... In what world is best efforts broadband traffic that happens to be used for an online game considered "high priority" traffic?

It's all very well to say on your residential BB connection that you think there should be constant prioritisation of gaming and other real time traffic, but that's not a realistic expectation. On some very high profile and high use cases, this may have been done in the past, and will continue to be considered - but expecting that ISPs are going to continuously monitor and optimise gaming traffic is simply not a reasonable or realistic expectation.

And the roading analogy is so often used becuase it's good. I think in this case it's pretty apt.

As for "Broken"... I'm unaware of any latency guarantees from ANY retail ISP to endpoints outside their network. It's not broken, it's not covered by an SLA, it's the Internet.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#1137412 25-Sep-2014 13:00

There's a more deterministic network path between NZ and the West Coast of the USA... I believe there are some WoT servers on the West Coast - have you considered playing on those servers? What's the performance like there compared to the Singapore servers?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Inphinity

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#1137435 25-Sep-2014 13:06

Talkiet: There's a more deterministic network path between NZ and the West Coast of the USA... I believe there are some WoT servers on the West Coast - have you considered playing on those servers? What's the performance like there compared to the Singapore servers?

Cheers - N

Ping & performance to the WoT US West cluster is, in my experience, better than to WoT Asia, the problem is you can't currently roam an account between regions in WoT (Except US West and US East, as both are deemed the NA region), so you would have to start a new account, without any of your earned/bought tanks, upgrades, etc.

slingynz

154 posts

Master Geek

#1137436 25-Sep-2014 13:07

Talkiet:

Hang on... In what world is best efforts broadband traffic that happens to be used for an online game considered "high priority" traffic?

It's all very well to say on your residential BB connection that you think there should be constant prioritisation of gaming and other real time traffic, but that's not a realistic expectation. On some very high profile and high use cases, this may have been done in the past, and will continue to be considered - but expecting that ISPs are going to continuously monitor and optimise gaming traffic is simply not a reasonable or realistic expectation.

And the roading analogy is so often used becuase it's good. I think in this case it's pretty apt.

As for "Broken"... I'm unaware of any latency guarantees from ANY retail ISP to endpoints outside their network. It's not broken, it's not covered by an SLA, it's the Internet.

Cheers - N

Let me just reiterate. Real time application data should get prioritized routing, I couldn't care less what happens to other data.

This doesn't need to be done by continuously monitoring and optimising gaming traffic. Pick an IP/hostname/subnet and policy based routing takes care of the rest.
(how does that fit into your roading analogy?)

As for "broken", I was simply using your word. Read in the context I wrote it, implying an imperfect route.

Talkiet: There's a more deterministic network path between NZ and the West Coast of the USA... I believe there are some WoT servers on the West Coast - have you considered playing on those servers? What's the performance like there compared to the Singapore servers?

Cheers - N

SG 130, NAW 140.

However, having played 10,000 games and the not insignificant amount of money spent on my SEA accounts, with no possibility of transfer, I don't see this as an option. If wargaming ever offered the chance to transfer my accounts to NA I would take it in an instant, considering the trouble that is NZ -> SG routing.

Talkiet

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#1137516 25-Sep-2014 14:19

I hadn't realised the accounts couldn't roam, so I get the lack of enthusiasm to move to a different set of servers.

Sorry to say but I think the complexity of various routes to Singapore (with different contractual, price and performance characteristics) will mean that latency to Singapore is going to remain less optimal than you may wish for many ISPs.

I know you think that your gaming data needs to be treated better than everything else, but while occasionally changes are done to effect changes in some application data, generally speaking, Broadband is a best efforts service without multiple classes of service orapplication prioritisation. That's just the way it is.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

slingynz

154 posts

Master Geek

#1137588 25-Sep-2014 15:32

Talkiet: I hadn't realised the accounts couldn't roam, so I get the lack of enthusiasm to move to a different set of servers.

Sorry to say but I think the complexity of various routes to Singapore (with different contractual, price and performance characteristics) will mean that latency to Singapore is going to remain less optimal than you may wish for many ISPs.

I know you think that your gaming data needs to be treated better than everything else, but while occasionally changes are done to effect changes in some application data, generally speaking, Broadband is a best efforts service without multiple classes of service orapplication prioritisation. That's just the way it is.

Cheers - N

It's not so much about treating it better than other data, just sending it along a different route, which is what the original question was about... If vodafone can do it in a matter of hours, why does it take Bigpipe x weeks?

hio77

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#1137589 25-Sep-2014 15:37

In my experience, Vodafone were less happy to reroute traffic.

AU Gaming traffic issues on vodafone anyone? they have gotten better now it seems, but back when i was a regular user on them it was quite hard to get anything sorted.

this isnt so much a bigpipe issue, as it is a change in the routing on globalgateways (netgate) for better or worse, it seems they have made the change.

there is alot more to it than pressing a button unfortunately..

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michaelmurfy

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#1142847 27-Sep-2014 22:30

In future remember just how far Singapore is from us, and remember that you may not get the best route. We have this cable called the "southern cross cable" that is almost directly connected to the World of Tanks US servers. This is how the internet works and is not something Bigpipe have direct control over. It is not their fault that the services you're trying to access has pretty bad routing quite a bit of the time.

C:\Users\Michael>ping worldoftanks.com

Pinging worldoftanks.com [162.213.61.98] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 162.213.61.98: bytes=32 time=148ms TTL=54
Reply from 162.213.61.98: bytes=32 time=145ms TTL=54
Reply from 162.213.61.98: bytes=32 time=144ms TTL=54
Reply from 162.213.61.98: bytes=32 time=146ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 162.213.61.98:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 144ms, Maximum = 148ms, Average = 145ms

C:\Users\Michael>ping worldoftanks.asia

Pinging worldoftanks.asia [92.223.16.133] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 92.223.16.133: bytes=32 time=223ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.223.16.133: bytes=32 time=225ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.223.16.133: bytes=32 time=226ms TTL=49
Reply from 92.223.16.133: bytes=32 time=274ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 92.223.16.133:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 223ms, Maximum = 274ms, Average = 237ms

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insane

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#1142859 27-Sep-2014 23:28

Talkiet: Slower routes don't always mean something's broken, and therefore, there may be no need to 'fix'.

There are many reasons traffic may not be taking the shortest route somewhere. Roading analogies again come in useful. If every single person took the shortest route in Auckland to work at peak time, there would be a LOT of wasted roading infrastructure not being used and the shortest routes would get congested, causing even bigger issues. Things work best when the traffic spreads itself around.

Internet - Same deal.

Cheers _ N

While technically you're not wrong, I think that traditional Telecom/GGI line of thinking is a bit out dated now. In the past users accepted whatever they got, today users have options and if some ISPs are willing to accommodate then it's only a matter of time before users will vote with their feet, and they should.

The last ISP I worked for at one point had really passionate network engineers, who so happened to be gamers who took it upon themselves to always ensure they engineered gaming traffic accordingly. It can be done, it just takes passion/creativity, and a attitude of enablement which looks for ways to improve things, not ways to justify the status quo.

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