How to find out where my provider is located

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robertosc

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#290613 23-Nov-2021 11:06

I'm trying to find out which provider could offer me the lowest latency to data centres within New Zealand.

I'm assuming that the providers' servers physical locations are key to this (are they?) - because all my traffic goes through them. I'm located in Auckland, so it wouldn't make sense to get a provider in Dunedin to access a data centre in Auckland.

I'm also assuming that the infra I'm using will be the same whatever provider I pick - Chorus - so the only factors to make a difference in my connection is distance to provider and their internet link capacity.

Is there a map or a way to find out? Something that's not actively googling info about each provider. Thanks.

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#2817504 23-Nov-2021 11:14

I don't think your assumption that traffic goes through a single point is necessarily accurate. I suspect peering is important. If you have a small set of IPs you want to access you could post them, people in Auckland could do a few pings for you.

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#2817506 23-Nov-2021 11:16

On top of peering it'd be important to know what kind of data are you accessing? Some directly from an origin server or from a CDN? If CDN would the ISP have its own node?

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#2817574 23-Nov-2021 11:54

ISPs Vodafone, Spark, 2degrees ETC...... have data centres in many main centres

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#2817578 23-Nov-2021 12:01

No, physical locations of providers' infrastructure are not very important compared to some other things. If you really think you need the level of optimisation you suggest, you need to be much more explicit about the services you are concerned about and your location.

Cheers - N

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

robertosc

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#2817769 23-Nov-2021 13:35

My use case is gaming and remote desktoping from work to home using AnyConnect.

I do cloud gaming (xcloud) to Sydney, but I don't know the address :( Hopefully it will be to Auckland once Microsoft finishes its data centre here.

I don't know if other cases would matter (Googling things, Amazon Video, Youtube and Netflix) but I guess it wouldn't hurt to get a better ping. I would like to understand why I get 3ms latency to www.bing.com and 30ms to www.google.com.

My question was more towards trying to understand how stuff works instead of actually changing my provider (Now NZ) because of this; would be useful info for when I do, though. I'm an engineer but my network knowledge is pretty bad.

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#2817774 23-Nov-2021 13:49

Routing is not static and changes quite often happen

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#2817787 23-Nov-2021 14:33

As stated, routing is dynamic and highly dependent on performance. Also Microsoft Azure DC won't be here for months, and there's no guarantee a specific instance would move to NZ - unless you own it and actively move it. Too many variables to make changing ISP an easy decision.

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#2817796 23-Nov-2021 14:55

robertosc:

I would like to understand why I get 3ms latency to www.bing.com and 30ms to www.google.com.

Do a Tracert and have a look at the hops....

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#2817806 23-Nov-2021 15:12

@robertosc Also use the pathping command

michaeln

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#2817807 23-Nov-2021 15:14

robertosc:

I'm trying to find out which provider could offer me the lowest latency to data centres within New Zealand.

I'm assuming that the providers' servers physical locations are key to this (are they?) - because all my traffic goes through them. I'm located in Auckland, so it wouldn't make sense to get a provider in Dunedin to access a data centre in Auckland.

I'm also assuming that the infra I'm using will be the same whatever provider I pick - Chorus - so the only factors to make a difference in my connection is distance to provider and their internet link capacity.

Is there a map or a way to find out? Something that's not actively googling info about each provider. Thanks.

Your latency depends on

Physical distance (that the fibre goes, which is not necessity line of sight)
Serialisation delay (insignificant, assuming you have 100Mbps or more of connectivity)
Processing delay, per hop (should be microseconds, at most, unless you have IPSEC or similar enabled, and even then, modern hardware does this with almost no delay)
Queueing delay. I.e., how congested any part of the network is.

Physical distance leads to about 25ms round trip to Sydney. It's less than 10ms between almost any two points in NZ. Within a city it's less than 1ms (100km in fibre has a RTT of 0.98ms).

So, queuing tends to be most important, except when you are more than 100km away from the server.

If you are gaming, then <50ms latency is good enough (stimulus/response, speed of human reactions), but if you are really l33t then 20ms is considered the gold standard.

There are a few providers with their own fibre backbones up and down New Zealand, and within cities (especially to data centres).

Spark
Vocus
Vodafone

and the LFCs

Northpower
UFF
Enable
Chorus

Your assumption that everyone uses Chorus is incorrect. In particular, for inter-city (where the bulk of the distance is), Spark/Vocus/Vodafone will be your provider in NZ. Hawaiki, Southern Cross or TGA will be your international carrier.

nztim

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#2817826 23-Nov-2021 15:37

Most providers in New Zealand peer on the NZIX in Auckland, Christchurch (And soon to be wellington) and some to mega port as well

What this means is that your data from your connection goes to the BNG in the Major Exchange (in your case in Auckland that will most likely be Mayroll Drive)

From there is a dynamic route table to of anything available on the NZIX, in the case of Azure this they peer onto the NZIX and they will then carry the data from here

If a route cannot be found on the NZIX (or megaport) your ISP will route the data to their upstream provider

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robertosc

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#2818105 23-Nov-2021 22:51

Thank you all for your replies!

Do a Tracert and have a look at the hops....

I don't know why here in NZ I always get * * * from all hops anywhere I try to traceroute. Anyway, I went to the traceroute in Network Utility (Mac) and it gives me a different result, so I should probably use some option when trying from the terminal.

I got some interesting results (at least to me):

traceroute to www.google.com (142.250.76.100), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 dlinkrouter (192.168.0.1) 1.771 ms 1.343 ms 1.188 ms
2 * * *
3 * 202-56-33-128.nownz.co.nz (202.56.33.128) 4.909 ms 5.269 ms // NAPIER
4 as15169.sydney.megaport.com (103.26.68.56) 34.076 ms 37.775 ms 33.952 ms. // SYDNEY MEGAPORT
5 108.170.247.33 (108.170.247.33) 38.039 ms 31.422 ms 31.232 ms // SYDNEY GOOGLE
6 142.250.212.135 (142.250.212.135) 31.057 ms 34.175 ms 35.683 ms
7 syd09s24-in-f4.1e100.net (142.250.76.100) 36.699 ms 31.713 ms 30.367 ms

traceroute: Warning: www.bing.com has multiple addresses; using 204.79.197.200
traceroute to dual-a-0001.a-msedge.net (204.79.197.200), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 dlinkrouter (192.168.0.1) 1.882 ms 1.316 ms 1.209 ms
2 * * *
3 202-56-33-132.nownz.co.nz (202.56.33.132) 10.460 ms 3.056 ms 4.569 ms. // NAPIER
4 * * *
5 104.44.212.125 (104.44.212.125) 3.753 ms 5.917 ms 8.490 ms. // MICROSOFT REDMOND
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 a-0001.a-msedge.net (204.79.197.200) 10.985 ms 4.488 ms 4.422 ms. // MICROSOFT REDMOND

So I find it interesting that it's much faster to go to Redmond than Sydney. I'll find out the addresses of the actual gaming servers to see if it's worth playing from the US. Because of the low ping, I had thought the bing server was either here or in Australia.

Also Microsoft Azure DC won't be here for months, and there's no guarantee a specific instance would move to NZ

...

If you are gaming, then <50ms latency is good enough

Yeah, I heard MS DC is likely to be ready by the end of 2022 (and maybe even then it won't have xcloud blades) ;( . I'm talking about cloud gaming: my controller input is sent to the server that renders the screen image and sends back to me. It's literally an xbox in the cloud. I believe in this case a much lower than 50 ms latency makes sense, specially for some types of games, even for a total n00b like me. Although I confess that the little I played in the Australian cloud felt pretty normal - jitter was my problem.

> BNG in the Major Exchange

what is BNG?

I don't know how peering works. Does it mean it goes from my house to Mayoral Drive using Chorus fibre, then to NOW in Napier using Spark/Vocus/Vodafone fibre like michealn said, and from there ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't know...?

fe31nz

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#2818116 23-Nov-2021 23:47

robertosc:

I don't know why here in NZ I always get * * * from all hops anywhere I try to traceroute. Anyway, I went to the traceroute in Network Utility (Mac) and it gives me a different result, so I should probably use some option when trying from the terminal.

I got some interesting results (at least to me):

traceroute to www.google.com (142.250.76.100), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 dlinkrouter (192.168.0.1) 1.771 ms 1.343 ms 1.188 ms
2 * * *
3 * 202-56-33-128.nownz.co.nz (202.56.33.128) 4.909 ms 5.269 ms // NAPIER
4 as15169.sydney.megaport.com (103.26.68.56) 34.076 ms 37.775 ms 33.952 ms. // SYDNEY MEGAPORT
5 108.170.247.33 (108.170.247.33) 38.039 ms 31.422 ms 31.232 ms // SYDNEY GOOGLE
6 142.250.212.135 (142.250.212.135) 31.057 ms 34.175 ms 35.683 ms
7 syd09s24-in-f4.1e100.net (142.250.76.100) 36.699 ms 31.713 ms 30.367 ms

traceroute: Warning: www.bing.com has multiple addresses; using 204.79.197.200
traceroute to dual-a-0001.a-msedge.net (204.79.197.200), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 dlinkrouter (192.168.0.1) 1.882 ms 1.316 ms 1.209 ms
2 * * *
3 202-56-33-132.nownz.co.nz (202.56.33.132) 10.460 ms 3.056 ms 4.569 ms. // NAPIER
4 * * *
5 104.44.212.125 (104.44.212.125) 3.753 ms 5.917 ms 8.490 ms. // MICROSOFT REDMOND
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 a-0001.a-msedge.net (204.79.197.200) 10.985 ms 4.488 ms 4.422 ms. // MICROSOFT REDMOND

So I find it interesting that it's much faster to go to Redmond than Sydney. I'll find out the addresses of the actual gaming servers to see if it's worth playing from the US. Because of the low ping, I had thought the bing server was either here or in Australia.

> BNG in the Major Exchange

what is BNG?

I don't know how peering works. Does it mean it goes from my house to Mayoral Drive using Chorus fibre, then to NOW in Napier using Spark/Vocus/Vodafone fibre like michealn said, and from there ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't know...?

Your trace to www.google.com is going to Sydney. Your trace to www.bing.com is going nowhere near Redmond - a ping time of < 5 ms does not get you out of New Zealand. So there is bing.com host in New Zealand. When I run a trace to www.bing.com via 2Degrees, it winds up in the Vocus network and then stops getting any more ping responses.

BNG = Border Network Gateway, the router where your traffic leaves your ISP's network. Good ISPs have multiple BNGs in different parts of the country connecting to different networks. Bad ISPs have only one BNG in Auckland and all traffic to other networks has to go to Auckland first even if the ultimate destination is in the same city as you.

nztim

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#2818189 24-Nov-2021 08:12

robertosc:

3 * 202-56-33-128.nownz.co.nz (202.56.33.128) 4.909 ms 5.269 ms // NAPIER

you are getting confused that this is Napier. From Auckland to Napier the round trip ping will be more than 4ms (more like 11-12ms) - this will NOWNZs BNG in Mayroll Drive Exchange, From there it is taking a trip across the Tasman at about 35ms which is about right

Try ping a site directly on the NZIX (for example) www.trademe.co.nz

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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#2818193 24-Nov-2021 08:27

9 a-0001.a-msedge.net (204.79.197.200) 10.985 ms 4.488 ms 4.422 ms. // MICROSOFT REDMOND

There is zero chance that hop is in Redmond if it's only 10ms away from you. That will be Auckland. When I trace that, it looks to me like it's at APE.

If you've just looked that IP up in a geo-location database, that is a wildly inaccurate way to do that.

The simple answer is the best you are going to do for anything Microsoft-based is Sydney. It's going to be 30-40ms away regardless of which ISP in NZ you pick (assuming any of the main reputable names). Everyone now is buying bandwidth (or has a POP even) directly in to those data centers as there's just so much content being served by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

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