Testing Latency to Peering point

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Testing Latency to Peering point

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#84668 4-Jun-2011 20:36

Hi.

I am trying to determine whether High evening latencies are from Telecom Wholesale, or from my ISP.
I am currently running pingplotter tests (5 second pings) to one of the servers at my ISP.

Is there an IP address at the Peering point (Probably APE) that I can ping and get latency times directly to the peering point excluding any ISP latency, or will all pings have to traverse the tunnel to my ISP before being routed back to the APE IP address?

I am in New Plymouth on ADSL1 on Spotswood Exchange (SWO) ISP is Xnet

The second hop in the trace after my router is 58.28.15.31, an Xnet IP. Is this likely to be at the handover point at the peering exchange, or at Xnet's data centre?

Regards Allen.

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477857 4-Jun-2011 21:24

AllenG: Hi.

..Is there an IP address at the Peering point (Probably APE)
...

Apologies if the handover point is not at APE?. I am trying to check latencies between my PC and the handover point between wholesale & ISP where-ever that may be.

nigelj

856 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477860 4-Jun-2011 21:32

I'm pretty sure (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) but, generally, traffic is trunked to the ISP handover, so the handover links are invisible to the customer (not to the Exchange/chorus though).

Easiest way is think VPN, any traffic going through the VPN, is unaware of all the hops that it going through (original traceroute may say: localhost->homerouter->ISProuter1,2,3,4->international link->VPN Server, but over the VPN, it'll just be: localhost->vpnserver)

Hence, the only people that could test the performance of the handover is Chorus and/or the ISP.

Pinging any of the peering exchanges (APE/WIX etc) would have to go through the ISPs equipment, because the handover/trunk AFAIK terminates at the ISP equipment.

So really, it ain't possible.

Edit:

An example, when I was with Actrix, (I'm pretty sure they only had a Wellington handover/equipment at the time), if I was to ping APE, the traceroute would look something like:

1. MyMachine
2. My Router
3. Actrix's handover router
4-~6. Actrix routers
7/8 FX Networks, Wellington->Auckland
9. APE machine I'm pinging

(may not have been 9 hops, but you get the picture)

Hidden in that, in the real physical would, there is likely a few hops to get my traffic through the wholesale network from the Auckland exchange to the Wellington handover (hop 2 & hop 3) that were invisible to me as the customer, but essential to get my traffic to my ISP (which is what you are asking to test).

Edit2: Meant to say, the closest to pinging the physical handover point/location, would be pretty much like (As I understand it) pinging the first ISP hop (i.e. the first traceroute hop after your equipment)

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477868 4-Jun-2011 22:07

I suspected it wasn't going to be easy.

My ISP is pushing telecom

The response from Wholesale was "The DSLAM has been deloaded due to Cabinetisation activity , over the last 2 weeks the DSLAM has come within 2 meg of threshhold only once.
Had a look at the B RAS and it does not have a congestion problem either."

If Telecom say the problem is not with them, how can I prove that it's the ISP?

BTW My synch speed is good for ADSL1. Ping times follow typical evening congestion slowdown. EG
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=65&topicid=81800&page_no=3#477248

Regards Allen.

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#477874 4-Jun-2011 22:31

If your router can do it you can do it you can do "ATM" pings.

Using a cisco 837 with UBS I used to do something like if I remember right..

ping atm interface atm0.1 0 100 end-loopback (ping the Telecom RAN)
ping atm interface atm0.1 0 100 seq-loopback (ping the DSLAM)
ping (defaultgateway) (pings the ISP's router)

Things might have changed due to UBA, EUBA etc on where the ping comes back from.

With these you could see where the latency was..

Thanks

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477879 4-Jun-2011 22:43

I only have a domestic Linksys WAG54GP2

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#477881 4-Jun-2011 22:50

some of as you call it "domestic" routers can do ATM pings..

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477886 4-Jun-2011 23:19

LennonNZ: some of as you call it "domestic" routers can do ATM pings..

Didn't even thing about Telnetting to the router, well, what do you know!

What is the format of the ping, should there be command line switches, or exactly as you typed?
The Telnet session has echoed my command with
"PING atm interface atm0.1 0 100 end-loopback (67.215.65.132): 56 data bytes",
and frozen there, no further text or prompt?

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#477890 4-Jun-2011 23:31

It seems you are using opendns as the name servers and that ping is not doing what you expect on your router. it is pinging an ip address . 67.215.65.132 is hit-nxdomain.opendns.com (nxdomain = the domain does not exist)

Different routers have different commands.. you will have to look up the CLI manual (if there is one) and see if it can do atm pings.. ATM pings are quite different than layer 3 pings.

using opendns name servers can actually cause slowness as content from cdn's will come form overseas usually not from local nodes.

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477894 4-Jun-2011 23:41

LennonNZ: It seems you are using opendns as the name servers and that ping is not doing what you expect on your router. it is pinging an ip address . 67.215.65.132 is hit-nxdomain.opendns.com (nxdomain = the domain does not exist)

Different routers have different commands.. you will have to look up the CLI manual (if there is one) and see if it can do atm pings.. ATM pings are quite different than layer 3 pings.

using opendns name servers can actually cause slowness as content from cdn's will come form overseas usually not from local nodes.

Yes, using opendns for content filtering.

Will put back the Xnet DNS and try again.
A Cisco page I've browsed after a quick google search of ATM ping formats the interface number differently? EG ping atm interface atm1/1.1 0 500

Allen.

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#477899 5-Jun-2011 00:51

the command is cisco ios specific and the interface is the interface that you have the connection set up on on.

ie

ping atm interface

as usually you have something set up like..

interface ATM0.1 point-to-point
pvc 0/100
...
etc

then ping atm interface atm0.1 0 100 .... would be the command used.

As you have a Linksys WAG54GP2 it will be completely different and your router may not be able to do it at all. I can't find a CLI manual for it..

insane

3240 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#477910 5-Jun-2011 03:51

AllenG: Hi.

I am trying to determine whether High evening latencies are from Telecom Wholesale, or from my ISP.
I am currently running pingplotter tests (5 second pings) to one of the servers at my ISP.

....

The second hop in the trace after my router is 58.28.15.31, an Xnet IP. Is this likely to be at the handover point at the peering exchange, or at Xnet's data centre?

Regards Allen.

That second hop is the one you should care about. If you are genuinely seeing elevated latency to that hop, and then to every hop afterwards then the congestion likely lies within the Telecom Wholesale network. That first device you see in your trace will be the Xnet BRAS, ie one of their DSL aggregation routers which all users terminate on and your gateway.

I've been following a number of threads you've made on the forums recently and you seem to be expecting an awful lot out of your DSL1 connection.
Speaking from experience, what Telecom believe to be an acceptable level of congestion is not always accurate. I'm sure they are not looking at real time statistics and therefore will not see the short spikes/bursts in traffic. You really need to fine someone who's willing to tell you whether they are seeing packets being dis-guarded on DSLAMs uplinks.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#477934 5-Jun-2011 09:57

What issues are you expericincing? VoIP issus still or genberal internet browsing?

If it's browsing related the first thing to do is abandon the 3rd party DNS servers, these shouldn't be used in NZ unless you fully understand the downsides as they'll mess with all the locally hosted CDN's and will only make your internet slower.

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#477956 5-Jun-2011 11:15

insane:
That second hop is the one you should care about.

The high latency is on all hops. I'll start tracing that second hop for comparison.

insane:
I've been following a number of threads you've made on the forums recently and you seem to be expecting an awful lot out of your DSL1 connection.

I have been sold an internet plan that includes quote "digital quality telephone line using your Broadband connection". I know that DSL is a best effort service. Am I asking too much that the VOIP actually works satisfactorily 24/7?

Sbiddle: What issues are you expericincing? VoIP issus still or genberal internet browsing?

Hi Insane, & Sbiddle, The main issue is VOIP. During most evenings there are dropped syllables and slurring of words. Some evenings there has also been several seconds of delay between speaking and hearing the speech from the other end. I have had to hang up and use the mobile. I currently have all calls redirected to the mobile until I resolve this.
Also, TVNZ on demand is unusable at times in the evening. Always pausing to buffer. This is local traffic.
I am aware of the issues with third party DNS. Have been using it for content filtering.

I am pinning my hopes that when my DSLAM eventually gets upgraded to ADSL2+ (september at last update) that this will improve things. failing that, waiting for Xnet to be able to provide EUBA with a dedicated VOIP channel at a reasonable price.

LennonNZ, Thanks for the info.
The router looks like it has a limited set of CLI commands. I havn't been able to find any docs either.

insane

3240 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#478407 7-Jun-2011 01:12

AllenG:
insane:
That second hop is the one you should care about.

The high latency is on all hops. I'll start tracing that second hop for comparison.

insane:
I've been following a number of threads you've made on the forums recently and you seem to be expecting an awful lot out of your DSL1 connection.

I have been sold an internet plan that includes quote "digital quality telephone line using your Broadband connection". I know that DSL is a best effort service. Am I asking too much that the VOIP actually works satisfactorily 24/7?

Sbiddle: What issues are you expericincing? VoIP issus still or genberal internet browsing?

Hi Insane, & Sbiddle, The main issue is VOIP. During most evenings there are dropped syllables and slurring of words. Some evenings there has also been several seconds of delay between speaking and hearing the speech from the other end. I have had to hang up and use the mobile. I currently have all calls redirected to the mobile until I resolve this.
Also, TVNZ on demand is unusable at times in the evening. Always pausing to buffer. This is local traffic.
I am aware of the issues with third party DNS. Have been using it for content filtering.

I am pinning my hopes that when my DSLAM eventually gets upgraded to ADSL2+ (september at last update) that this will improve things. failing that, waiting for Xnet to be able to provide EUBA with a dedicated VOIP channel at a reasonable price.

LennonNZ, Thanks for the info.
The router looks like it has a limited set of CLI commands. I havn't been able to find any docs either.

Few quick questions..

Are you perhaps using the internet at the same time as making the phone calls?
Does your router support even basic QoS and is it enabled?
How do you connect to your mode/router? ie Ethernet/Wireless
Does it happen to all calls or only to particular networks?
Are your national speeds severely reduced at the same time as the calls become choppy and TVNZ on demand unusable?

lastly someone over at another nz forum made this little speed test utility
http://bgrade.bage.net.nz/

Set it to run as a scheduled task every 15 minutes or so and let it plot a graph of your national and international speeds over time. One of the tests it runs is to download a file hosted at WxC so should give you a fairly accurate national speedtest.

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

#478650 7-Jun-2011 18:31

insane:
Few quick questions..

Are you perhaps using the internet at the same time as making the phone calls?
Does your router support even basic QoS and is it enabled?
How do you connect to your mode/router? ie Ethernet/Wireless
Does it happen to all calls or only to particular networks?
Are your national speeds severely reduced at the same time as the calls become choppy and TVNZ on demand unusable?

Hi Insane in answer to your questions.

1. The VOIP issues occur whether the PC is on or off.
2. The Linksys WAG54GP2 router does support QOS for VOIP. The VOIP configuration has been provisioned by Xnet and is locked so I can't look at the VOIP setting area for line one. As the VOIP issues occur regardless of the PC being on or off, I don't think QOS is the issue?
3. PC is connected by wired ethernet.
4. Happens over the busy evening period. Worst around 19:30 to 20:30 every evening. Have been testing to Xnet Voicemail service most evenings last week. Slurring and dropped syllables on recieved speech of varying degree on most of the mid evening tests.
Reduced speed, choppy calls & TVNZ on demand all during mid evening period .

Xnet have agreed that there is a congestion issue (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=65&topicid=81800&page_no=3#478443) and have confirmed it with other users on the DSLAM. The problem now is getting enough traction to get Wholesale to act.

insane:
lastly someone over at another nz forum made this little speed test utility
http://bgrade.bage.net.nz/

Set it to run as a scheduled task every 15 minutes or so and let it plot a graph of your national and international speeds over time. One of the tests it runs is to download a file hosted at WxC so should give you a fairly accurate national speedtest.

Will have a look, Thanks.