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AS6453.net peering sucks

AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

We appear to be going around in circles here...
Ignore all routings for gateways/routers apart from things in this IP range - 216.98.48.0 - 216.98.63.255
Your AS4653.net TBB graph is if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net? If so, this will not be routing via Tinet!!!! This is fairly obvious... It will more than likely be going the same route as your ping plotter shows with AS4653 London >  AS4653 New York >  AS4653 Chiacgo >  AS4653 Montreal. I think it's safe to say that AS4653 do not have a direct route from London or Paris to Montreal.
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Routing to the ubisoft ip address 216.98.48.56 which is the most relevant out of all the other ubisoft addresses, because that is the IP the game passes traffic over, but unfortunately ubi decided to set this Ip along with most of all their other IP's that their games use, So the tbb ping monitor like other similar resources is unable to get a reply  so cannot  graph anything
So the next best thing to that is to  ping the last hop in the chain on the tracert  to get some idea of what the latency is like compared to what i have,
Because the routing does not and i have never seen it switch back and forth from different peering providers  therefore it apart from some changes within level3 's network topology it's by all intents and purposes a static route as it never changes from tata, and from how this switching between provider is working  it would cause even more variance in the min latency, which would render playing almost any game  pointless  ,
AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Quote from: deathtrap
Routing to the ubisoft ip address 216.98.48.56 which is the most relevant out of all the other ubisoft addresses, because that is the IP the game passes traffic over, but unfortunately ubi decided to set this Ip along with most of all their other IP's that their games use, So the tbb ping monitor like other similar resources is unable to get a reply  so cannot  graph anything
So the next best thing to that is to  ping the last hop in the chain on the tracert  to get some idea of what the latency is like compared to what i have,

But do you not understand that your traffic can take a completely different route to that penultimate hop vs. the Ubisoft IP (which block ICMP requests) if you do seperate trace routes?
I'll give you an example (these are both done right now - I have not changed gateways):
Quote
TRACEROUTE (using proto 1/icmp)
HOP RTT      ADDRESS
1   1.87 ms  router.asus.com (192.168.1.1)
2   9.03 ms  lo0-central10.ptw-ag01.plus.net (195.166.128.195)
3   9.01 ms  link-a-central10.ptw-gw01.plus.net (212.159.2.144)
4   5.78 ms  xe-4-2-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net (212.159.0.240)
5   35.22 ms te-4-2.car5.London1.Level3.net (217.163.45.249)
6   6.14 ms  ae-51-51.csw1.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.88)
7   6.16 ms  ae-115-3501.edge3.London1.Level3.net (4.69.166.130)
8   9.07 ms  ix-20-0.tcore1.LDN-London.as6453.net (195.219.83.101)
9   6.18 ms  if-17-2.tcore1.L78-London.as6453.net (80.231.130.129)
10  5.89 ms  if-2-2.tcore2.L78-London.as6453.net (80.231.131.1)
11  78.00 ms if-20-2.tcore2.NYY-NewYork.as6453.net (216.6.99.13)
12  96.20 ms if-12-6.tcore1.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net (216.6.99.46)
13  96.10 ms if-22-2.tcore2.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net (64.86.79.1)
14  97.80 ms if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net (66.198.96.45)

Quote
TRACEROUTE (using port 3077/tcp)
HOP RTT       ADDRESS
1   1.61 ms   router.asus.com (192.168.1.1)
2   10.95 ms  lo0-central10.ptw-ag01.plus.net (195.166.128.195)
3   10.96 ms  link-b-central10.ptw-gw02.plus.net (212.159.2.146)
4   8.59 ms   xe-4-2-0.ptw-cr02.plus.net (212.159.0.242)
5   5.79 ms   ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net (195.166.129.4)
6   5.78 ms   ae2.pcl-cr01.plus.net (195.166.129.6)
7   14.85 ms  ae-52-52.csw2.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.120)
8   5.64 ms   ae-226-3602.edge3.London1.Level3.net (4.69.166.150)
9   12.70 ms  ae-41-41.ebr1.Paris1.Level3.net (4.69.159.82)
10  12.22 ms  ae-81-81.csw3.Paris1.Level3.net (4.69.161.86)
11  100.07 ms if-2-2.tcore2.L78-London.as6453.net (80.231.131.1)
12  101.50 ms if-20-2.tcore2.NYY-NewYork.as6453.net (216.6.99.13)
13  165.54 ms xe-4-2-0.mtl10.ip4.tinet.net (141.136.107.125)
14  103.71 ms if-22-2.tcore2.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net (64.86.79.1)
15  104.29 ms if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net (66.198.96.45)
16  90.85 ms  lb-lsg-prod.ubisoft.com (216.98.48.56)

The routes are completely different and I imagine it's fairly meaningless (for a network guy) to compare the two. What you can see is that the routing to lb-lsg-prod.ubisoft.com is messed up with AS6453 and Tinet, although it does not appear to severely impact the actual point to point latency.
I think the most useful IPs (in terms of using ICMP pings) are the two I have found. There is clearly small amounts of continuous packet loss on those IPs, which appears to be Ubisoft's end because you did not have any packet loss on that Ubisoft/Tinet gateway gateway graph.
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Packet loss is probably down to antiquated failing equipment that ubi are still using ,as for the route swapping  on the other ubi IP's the amount of variance that i observed  using ping plotter  over quite some time did not impress me in the slightest
There ain't no packet loss on tinet , and that does look a better route , when direct  , if the dumb asses at tata dropped the divert to Chicago there would not be this issue,  the only times that there has been issues is when the route got changed to go via Paris Amsterdam,Frankfurt then back to london  before level 3  passed it to tata , that added a lot of latency
And for me the via Paris and back to London  by level3  before handing the traffic over  is another issue that has occurred a few times, level 3 know how to break stuff
ejs
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

There is clearly more than one route, however a single traceroute won't necessarily show only the one or other route. It can show parts of both routes mixed up. I can repeatedly run traceroute to the same destination and get a different combination of parts of each route each time.
For a start there seem to be 2 different routes out of Plusnet, on pcl-ag06 it seems it can be pcl -> level3 or pcl -> ptw -> level3.
AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Quote from: deathtrap
Packet loss is probably down to antiquated failing equipment that ubi are still using ,as for the route swapping

I would imagine there is going to be some truth in this. Their gaming servers are located in a very strange place, even Americans get high pings (I tried some pings yesterday from Seattle and got higher pings than I do from the UK...). It is surprising they do not have European servers, particularly as they are a French company.
Quote from: deathtrap
There ain't no packet loss on tinet , and that does look a better route , when direct  , if the dumb asses at tata dropped the divert to Chicago there would not be this issue

I don't quite understand why traffic with Tata goes via Chicago to Montreal when looking at their network map - http://121.243.66.50/downloads/map/GFP-master_interactive_pdf-10-04-12.pdf
Tinet also do not appear to have a direct link from London to Montreal - http://www.gtt.net/_includes/uploads/fullnetworkmaplarge.jpg
Quote from: deathtrap
And for me the via Paris and back to London  by level3  before handing the traffic over  is another issue that has occurred a few times, level 3 know how to break stuff

(Again, please correct me if what I am saying is wrong here...)
There may be a reason that is happening (and maybe Level3 are not at fault). If Level3 have a large amount of traffic for Ubisoft, Tinet might not want this to go via London. Someone tried to change something yesterday and you had the traffic go to Paris and back to London 3 times!
Similarly, Ubisoft might have a cheaper peering arrangement with Tata and want more traffic to be routed via them.
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Quote from: AndyH
I would imagine there is going to be some truth in this. Their gaming servers are located in a very strange place, even Americans get high pings (I tried some pings yesterday from Seattle and got higher pings than I do from the UK...). It is surprising they do not have European servers, particularly as they are a French company.

Ubisoft i think are a French Canadian company, the sell their games on a global scale, they should have servers in Asia and Europe as well as in the USA , that should be linked ,But with ubisoft  that will never happen, maybe it's the way the French Canadians are ?
Quote from: AndyH
I don't quite understand why traffic with Tata goes via Chicago to Montreal when looking at their network map - http://121.243.66.50/downloads/map/GFP-master_interactive_pdf-10-04-12.pdf
Tinet also do not appear to have a direct link from London to Montreal - http://www.gtt.net/_includes/uploads/fullnetworkmaplarge.jpg

Tinet will from it's London data centre route  to NewYork and then to Montreal  or it may if routed from Manchester  route to Ireland then Montreal,  And if it goes from Manchester and the ISP has  direct peering with tinet, no level3 ect is needed   It's a lot more of a direct route than TATA  is providing There is no logical reason why tata are sending traffic from their NewYork data centre via Chicago 788 mile by road  & 711.96 miles as the crow would fly then another 848 miles by road and 743.78 mi by Air travel  when New York to Montreal is 334.30 mile by airline  So even if we said that the direct route would be 500mile  the crazy way that TATA are currently routing  is at lease 3 times as long @ a modest 1500miles  and that sort of distance doesn't have a detrimental impact on the latency because  it uses fibre cables and travels at nearly the speed of light , well as a customer  from my view point it bloody well is doing , and im still waiting for my ISP to do something about it
Quote from: AndyH
(Again, please correct me if what I am saying is wrong here...)
There may be a reason that is happening (and maybe Level3 are not at fault). If Level3 have a large amount of traffic for Ubisoft, Tinet might not want this to go via London. Someone tried to change something yesterday and you had the traffic go to Paris and back to London 3 times!
Similarly, Ubisoft might have a cheaper peering arrangement with Tata and want more traffic to be routed via them.
 
There is always a reason for everything that happens, But whilst you maybe correct  about level3, You may also be wrong , i would say that they route traffic automatically  with very little human intervention  So if their system  has goofed out , negligence would be the reason and it would be their fault,  But if you are  in part correct, it would possibly go some way as to explain  why ISP's such as Zen  peer directly with Tinet ,maybe because they realised that the alternatives  via level3 and tata where  not fit for purpose ? or they where getting too many complaints from customers , Not only this ,but it could be down to the type of service that the ISP is paying for and how & where they are able to connect to their peers , Looking at some of the BT retail tracerts, they are a real mess, and have a lot of hops near double what  i would expect, and of course this adds  even more to the latency ,
One of the many reasons why i would never be a BT retail customer
Well my patience is wearing thin now, A message to Plusnet  : I would really like to know what is going on with this,is this de-pref  of AS6453.net  going to ever happen & if so when, if not ,why not ? A straight answer please without excuses would be appreciated

AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Quote from: deathtrap
Ubisoft i think are a French Canadian company, the sell their games on a global scale, they should have servers in Asia and Europe as well as in the USA , that should be linked ,But with ubisoft  that will never happen, maybe it's the way the French Canadians are ?

I checked - they are a French company. From Wikipedia:
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.  is a French multinational video-game developer and publisher, headquartered in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France.
The company’s worldwide presence includes 29 studios in 19 countries; the company has subsidiaries in 26 countries. Ubisoft is the third-largest independent game publisher in the world, only behind Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts(EA). The company’s largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal in Canada, and employs about 2,100 people.
In Ubisoft’s 2008–2009 fiscal year, the company’s revenue was €1.256 billion, reaching the 1 billion euro milestone for the first time in the company’s history. Ubisoft has created its own film division, called, “Ubisoft Motion Pictures”, which creates shows and films based on the company’s games.


Quote from: deathtrap
Tinet will from it's London data centre route  to NewYork and then to Montreal  or it may if routed from Manchester  route to Ireland then Montreal,  And if it goes from Manchester and the ISP has  direct peering with tinet, no level3 ect is needed   It's a lot more of a direct route than TATA  is providing There is no logical reason why tata are sending traffic from their NewYork data centre via Chicago 788 mile by road  & 711.96 miles as the crow would fly then another 848 miles by road and 743.78 mi by Air travel  when New York to Montreal is 334.30 mile by airline  So even if we said that the direct route would be 500mile  the crazy way that TATA are currently routing  is at lease 3 times as long @ a modest 1500miles  and that sort of distance doesn't have a detrimental impact on the latency because  it uses fibre cables and travels at nearly the speed of light , well as a customer  from my view point it bloody well is doing , and im still waiting for my ISP to do something about it

As Plusnet don't peer with Tata/Tinet - your traffic has to go via Level3 or BTnet to get to Tata/Tinet.
For some reason, Tata route via Chicago to all the Ubisoft IPs in Montreal. This is just not when they route from the UK, but also Europe and even in the US they take this route. So there must be an explanation why they are doing this rather than routing via New York where they appear to have a direct link to Montreal.
I have emailed them to ask, maybe they will respond.
Quote from: deathtrap
There is always a reason for everything that happens, But whilst you maybe correct  about level3, You may also be wrong , i would say that they route traffic automatically  with very little human intervention  So if their system  has goofed out , negligence would be the reason and it would be their fault,  But if you are  in part correct, it would possibly go some way as to explain  why ISP's such as Zen  peer directly with Tinet ,maybe because they realised that the alternatives  via level3 and tata where  not fit for purpose ? or they where getting too many complaints from customers , Not only this ,but it could be down to the type of service that the ISP is paying for and how & where they are able to connect to their peers , Looking at some of the BT retail tracerts, they are a real mess, and have a lot of hops near double what  i would expect, and of course this adds  even more to the latency ,
One of the many reasons why i would never be a BT retail customer

Level3 is a major major peer. Plusnet chose Level3 for a reason and they must be happy with the service they provide (there are only very occasional complaints about routing on here).
Zen has two main peers: Tinet and and NTT. Just because they do not use Level3, does not mean Level3 provide a bad service. There are many factors involved when an ISP choses a peer - the main one I would think being cost. As Plusnet are a significantly larger ISP, they are probably more flexible in what they can pay etc.
With BT Retail - I wouldn't put too much emphasis on their routing. It's the end latency (i.e. the pings from you to the destination) that is most important. As Kelly said before, your traffic will pass more hidden routers/switches/network devices to get to the Plusnet gateway than the hops you will see in a traceroute.
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

At the end of the day AS6453.net  are providing a substandard service, but if level 3 think this is fine, that IMO makes them just as bad, Zen and others  probably peer directly with Tinet to ensure  their  indirect routing doesn't increase their customers latency . And yes i was aware that  all the switches gateways ect  that my connection takes from the FTTC cab to the handover point at the plusnet data centre  are not visible ,What that has to do with my latency issues  to ubisoft i do not know , and i would not hold much hope in you getting a informative response from TATA AS6453.net
On the subject of ubisoft  they have offices. HQ's in several different countries, so they can market their goods, but  gaming and authentication servers in only one location Montreal Canada
If that doesn't tell you how they operate from a customer/consumers POV then nothing will
But the fact  still remains that  my ping is 20ms higher than it was  up till November 13,  I was told that plusnet where going to de pref the routing  1 week ago , that is after complaining about this for several months  , and still nothing has been done about it,
AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Quote from: deathtrap
At the end of the day AS6453.net  are providing a substandard service, but if level 3 think this is fine, that IMO makes them just as bad,

But if AS6453.net are providing a poor service, what has that got to do with Level3 and why should they be concerned? Once your traffic leaves Level3's network, that is the end of their responsibility. Level3 are not being paid by Ubisoft, so they have no accountability to them. They are just sending the traffic where AS6453.net/Tinet Ubisoft tell them.
Quote from: deathtrap
Zen and others  probably peer directly with Tinet to ensure  their  indirect routing doesn't increase their customers latency

Do you really think Zen peer with Tinet because they look at individual sites like Ubisoft?
I am pretty sure it has more to do with cost and their network coverage (which looks far inferior to that of Level3 on the network maps.
Quote from: deathtrap
And yes i was aware that  all the switches gateways ect  that my connection takes from the FTTC cab to the handover point at the plusnet data centre  are not visible ,What that has to do with my latency issues  to ubisoft i do not know , and i would not hold much hope in you getting a informative response from TATA AS6453.net

I get the impression that you associate many hops on a traceroute as bad - even when the latency to the destination is fine.
Quote from: deathtrap
I was told that plusnet where going to de pref the routing  1 week ago , that is after complaining about this for several months  , and still nothing has been done about it,

They may have tried that already - let's see what they say. There were also no guarantees it would work...
But you have to accept that the increased latency you are seeing is not Plusnet's fault - they have no control of your traffic once it leaves their network and that of their partners. At the end of the day, you may have no other option but to accept the increased latency or to move ISPs to someone who peers directly with Tinet because you think that will fix your problems. I am sure that is a very risky move because Ubisoft could suddenly decide to no longer use Tinet or to move more traffic over to Tata.
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

You forgot to add the other option, to uninstall the game and bin the  the game disk  because it's worthless ,Oh  more importantly never buy anything ubisoft again, because they are jokers just like the peering providers
And the last time someone from plusnet replied nothing had been done, and the route has not changed,  therefore nothing has been done as yet, And am still waiting to hear what if anything plusnet are actually going to do ,
Kelly
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Sorry I've disappeared off this thread, I'm on holiday.  Back in in another week.  I'll get Dave to provide an update on where we are on this though for you.  Last I looked at on this, we were going to attempt to prevent traffic going via TATA to see if that improves the performance, but the whole DDOS routing stalled that.
Kelly Dorset
Ex-Broadband Service Manager
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

@ Kelly this is correct, But why it wasn't done once the DDos nonsense  finished as common-sense  told me that this would more than likely  happen, except  it didn't because
It would appear that some confusion had crept in about the DDos scrubbing , someone assuming that they may re deploy it, which whilst yes they might ,if  that  had  been minutes, or hours away, If it had been  then fair enough,
But days weeks ,months even years away or maybe never Huh
Only ubisoft and who ever it decides to contract to carry out such work in the future, assuming it decides to use such services again , would know that in advance, Publishing regular service updates infact Ubi publishing any service updates  is a rarity, Communication  is their weakness , and that's not only on the internet connectivity side of things
AndyH
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Tinet is not looking to healthy tonight...
deathtrap
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Re: AS6453.net peering sucks

Oh really, well the tinet IP  this monitor is pinging isn't showing anything different http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-large/f6d603b9583d1a6b8e5dae05dd39b2c7-23-03-2014.png Why you have to continually  have to thrown negative view points  in the mix i do not know, we have established that  the IP you are pinging isn't a tinet IP but a ubisoft IP , and a different IP /server  than what my game connects to, it maybe with in the vast ubisoft network, but thats where the similarities stop
You are blaming Tinet  without  knowing if it is their transit link to blame, it could be  server load at ubisoft, who knows? we don't  that's for sure , What have you got against Tinet? as you clearly seem to have an issue with them for some reason, do you even play any ubisoft games online ?  Your distraction tactics aren't working give up