Odd ping jumps?

[{CLR}geneSW]

I've been noticing wierd ping jumps lately. I've pulled tracerts a couple of times when it happens and it seems to be a mix of the charllote (I slaughtered that name, I know) T2 and atlanta T3 routers.... Now, i've tried resetting my router and modem. restart of main rig, secondary laptop is shut down as it runs BOINC during the day when i'm not home, and the wife has only been surfing the web and playing on the WoW server here... So nothing that really should be hoging up bandwidth that much. I wonder if I was to call my I.P. if they could do anything like give me a different route. I'm not on DSL, broadband instead... Perhaps it's time to switch companies as I was getting decent speeds at first, but in the past 2-3 months the connection has been getting worse and worse over time.

[Duke{CLR}]

I had an issue with my cable company a few years back. During peak time my connection was slow. I ran speed tests through out the day and made a log of the times. When I called them they sent a guy out and said there were no problems of course the guy would come out during off peak use so everything was fine. I then signed up for DSL and during the free trial I made a side by side log of the same speed tests. It was obvious that my DSL was spot on throughout the day and my cable was really slow during prime time. I kicked my cable to the curb. Now my only issues are within the house when my step daughter is using her computer.

[Apache Warrior]

And you can not kick her to the curb.
Apache

[Duke{CLR}]

And you can not kick her to the curb.
Apache

Not yet anyway.

[Hammy]

DSL is still pooled however, despite the suggestion that it is not.

The distance you live to the co-location (colo)center, the number of transactions (transmission packets to some) per min/hour, and the type of backbone that is used to get you to the national backbone (it could be a quilt of jumps or direct feed into the national backbone) determine the value of the DSL Connection.

Densely populated areas actually will get better results with cable, than DSL in most cases unless you are close to your Colo and that Colo feeds directly into your area connection point to the national Backbone.

Otherwise, the services provider will put a limiter on your connection that will allow everyone to get even service level from their broadband connection. This is why Duke enjoys his connection, there is no change in expectation, he knows the speed of delivery is consistent.

In densely populated areas, cable providers use an equation to address these variables:

Number of subscribers in that block unit.
Number of transmission up
Number of transmission down
Number of MBs/KBs in total
Total Peak
Total Slack time

They will take a running average and allocate services to your block area in this way, and then have built in peaktime volume variables to make sure that they dont have a production down time.

The thing cable broadband subscribers compete with is not the people using their broadband in their area, but the television subscribers- TV provides a bigger revenue stream and has an UpTime requirement that is much higher than the broadband users.

Okay-- Not really on the topic, but it became relevant because of what Duke said.

I wish it was 2001 and I lived 3 buildings from my Colocation. MAN my DSL was fast!!

~Hammy

[mapes]

DSL is not pooled

Cable subscribers share the line connecting them to neighborhood servers; ADSL subscribers share the line connecting them from the regional telephone office to the main telephone office.


So the uplink from your dslam to the main telephone office is shared. I think its easier to plan for growth and maintain good connection speeds on one fat pipe between two offices. instead of a general neighborhood area of 50 households.


While I'm sure the cable modem providers do they're best to assure service I think it would be harder to maintain that service. If you live in a neighborhood where people rent and move alot bandwidth expectations could get outta whack.

Your right though a main part of the competition for cables bandwidth is TV.


I don't agree with this however.

Densely populated areas actually will get better results with cable, than DSL in most cases unless you are close to your Colo and that Colo feeds directly into your area connection point to the national Backbone.

Like I said above I think it's easier to provision one fat pipe. Its quite easy to get traffic statistics (i.e ntop, snmp) on one connection then to model statistics + change parameters on 50 households usage.

I will always go DSL if given the chance over cable modem of comparable speeds...I just like having that dedicated connection. One other point too is I heard that unless the cable company encrypts the data at the end points it's easy to sniff the data. I have no idea if this is true I just saw something on this the other day.

Another nice thing is DSL is more resilient. In the case of cable if one amplifier fails all downstream users are cut off instantly.


What I am curious about is Fios in the states anyone have experience with that?

[mapes]

Ok back to topic. Gene if you want to see whats going over your network go and get this app

Wireshark: Go deep.

They have both windows and linux variants and it free. What I would do is get wireshark and fire it up. Start sniffing your outbound network and play your game. Wait until you see weird jumps. Then go and check out the packet capture. These packet captures can be huge but they reveal everything going over the wire. This would 100% rule out something on your network using up your bandwidth.

[{CLR}geneSW]

resolved: Company showed packetloss between their main routers downtown and my house... 2%, but it could be the problem... they are coming out saturday morning to attempt to fix this...

[Apache Warrior]

Apache

[mapes]

resolved: Company showed packetloss between their main routers downtown and my house... 2%, but it could be the problem... they are coming out saturday morning to attempt to fix this...

2% packet loss dosn't seem that huge to me?

[{CLR}geneSW]

not resolved:... I'm seriously thinking about switching I.S.P.'s... Tech calls me up, asks me what the problem is. I tell him that i'm having packet loss and higher pings to some east coast servers that I use. He asks if they are game servers. I tell him that some of them are. he says that they can't use the game servers as "reliable" ping and that by law they have to use cox.net yahoo.com or msn.com. Now, i'm no fool and I know this is a load of bullcrap as companies in the past that I have went with had no problem pinging to wherever. Not to mention that when I was on the phone with tech support last night I told them the exact same thing and they didn't mention this at all! He also stated that the cable splitter I was using wasn't rated for high speed internet, but it handles a wider range then the one he gave me will... he have me a splitter that handles things in the 5mhz to 1000mhz range, and the one that I have will handle anything in a 5mhz to 2400mhz range... he also replaced the lines running from the wall to the splitter and the splitter to the modem, which isn't going to do anything at all as the cables I had where fine to begin with!

Now, on top of all this... when he came over to check out the lines and everything, he pinged their website from my computer, and didn't know what any of the jumps inbetween was! The first jump went to their main router here in town, then it went up to LA, through 2 more jumps, then to their main website. He didn't know what the LA jump was, or the other two... Needless to say that i'm fairly mad and I think I will be talking to level3 tech support on monday about this issue...

[Trooper110]

I would...nothing worse than a dumbass tech who's telling you something that he read, heard, or just came up with from somewhere, when you know he's wrong. Hope they make things right for you gene. Luckily Comcast hasn't done anything yet to raise my ire.

[{CLR}geneSW]

Oh, what killed me the most Trooper was that he said he had been doing this for 10 years... I tried not to laugh.

[Trooper110]

Ouch. Did you ask him if the first 9.5 years they had him riding around on a tricycle asking if people had upgraded from 56k dial up to broadband?

Honestly with some of this stuff I'd like to know where they get their ideas for "best practice" and "customer service" from.

[mapes]

Well


I could understand if he didn't want to use a game server. However saying that by law all he could use was a portal site does seem a bit lame. Personally I would either use a network sniffer or a very large ftp transfer for testing....