Tracking down slow internet on SingTel Fibre to the home
SingTel makes big claims about the beauty of their fibre offering. I do not experience the claimed benefits. So I'm starting to track down what is happening. Interestingly when you visit SpeedTest, it shows fantastic results. I smell rat.
So I ran a test with Pocketinet in Walla Walla, WA. SpeedTest claims a 5ms ping response, but when I, immediate before or after such a test, issue a
Ein Schelm wer böses dabei denkt!
While this evidence isn't strong enough, to accuse someone of tampering, it points to the need to investigate why the results are so different ( IDA are you listening?). So I started looking a little deeper. Using traceroute with the -I parameter (that uses the same packets as ping) I checked a bunch of websites. Here are the results (I stripped out the boring parts):
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark international connectivity! (Sorry Wil)
Only Google bucks that pattern. But that's due to the fact that their DNS sends me to a server in Singapore. So the huge jump in latency happens in the 203.208.182._and 203.208.151._ subnets.
So, the servers might be in the SingTel overseas location? InfoSniper sees them in Singapore (you can try others with the same result). Now I wonder, is the equipment undersized, wrongly configured or something else happening that takes time on that machine?
Looking for an explanation.
Update 19 Sep 2014: Today the speedtest.net site shows ping results that are similar to traceroute/ping from the command line - unfortunately not due to the fact that the command line results got better, but the speedtest.net results worse - Now ranging in the 200ms. I wonder what happened. Checking the effective up/down speed will be a little more tricky. Stay tuned
So I ran a test with Pocketinet in Walla Walla, WA. SpeedTest claims a 5ms ping response, but when I, immediate before or after such a test, issue a
ping -c5 www.pocketinet.com
I get results rather in the range of 200-230ms.
Ein Schelm wer böses dabei denkt!
While this evidence isn't strong enough, to accuse someone of tampering, it points to the need to investigate why the results are so different ( IDA are you listening?). So I started looking a little deeper. Using traceroute with the -I parameter (that uses the same packets as ping) I checked a bunch of websites. Here are the results (I stripped out the boring parts):
traceroute -I www.pocketinet.com 9 203.208.152.217 3.913ms 3.919ms 4.033ms 10 203.208.149.30 204.256ms 203.208.172.226 170.493ms 171.314ms traceroute -I www.economist.com 9 203.208.166.57 4.316ms 4.882ms 4.680ms 10 203.208.151.246 193.164ms 203.208.151.214 188.148ms 203.208.182.122 196.526ms traceroute -I www.cnn.com 9 203.208.171.242 4.772ms 4.679ms 5.160ms 10 203.208.182.122 171.006ms 203.208.151.214 187.336ms 203.208.182.122 171.447ms traceroute -I www.ibm.com 9 203.208.153.142 4.385ms 5.857ms 3.853ms 10 203.208.173.106 178.135ms 203.208.151.94 183.842ms 203.208.182.86 181.097ms
Something is rotten in the state of
Only Google bucks that pattern. But that's due to the fact that their DNS sends me to a server in Singapore. So the huge jump in latency happens in the 203.208.182._and 203.208.151._ subnets.
whois
tells me:
whois 203.208.182.86 % [whois.apnic.net] % Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html % Information related to '203.208.182.64 - 203.208.182.127' inetnum: 203.208.182.64 - 203.208.182.127 netname: SINGTEL-IX-AP descr: Singapore Telecommunications Pte Ltd
So, the servers might be in the SingTel overseas location? InfoSniper sees them in Singapore (you can try others with the same result). Now I wonder, is the equipment undersized, wrongly configured or something else happening that takes time on that machine?
Looking for an explanation.
Update 19 Sep 2014: Today the speedtest.net site shows ping results that are similar to traceroute/ping from the command line - unfortunately not due to the fact that the command line results got better, but the speedtest.net results worse - Now ranging in the 200ms. I wonder what happened. Checking the effective up/down speed will be a little more tricky. Stay tuned
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 17 September 2014 | Comments (2) | categories: Buying Broadband