AS6453.net peering sucks

[paulmh5]

We have little or no control over where the traffic goes once its outside our network.
Owners of prefixes have the control, so as mentioned above UBI announce their routes to a transit provider (TATA for example) who pass that along to Level3 and in turn they pass the route to us.  Kelly has already spoken to (as you can see) the Network Architect, emailing the NOC team won't provide any better results I'm afraid.
Its also worth noting that geography has little impact when you are traveling at the speed of light.  Large tier 1 ISPs like Level3 may well have a backbone infrastructure located in a different geographical part of the world in the same way we have equipment in London and Sheffield.  If their design is to route things to a 'core' location before handing them off to an upstream peer, or the route is advertised to them via a different location that will explain why traffic is being routed over seemingly large distances.

[deathtrap]

So speed of light geography make no difference, then explain why the latency has risen then?

[zubel]

Quote from: deathtrap

Verisign  routing doesn't have to be used  as other routing to ubisoft exists

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if it's wrong.
Right now, the /24 you are talking about is only being advertised out of Verisign's network.  They have inserted themselves as an intermediary in the traffic between consumers and the servers.  This is to mitigate an ongoing DDoS.
When the DDoS subsides, they will then remove themselves as an intermediary, and routing will return to "normal" (which is still likely to be sub optimally through Level 3 and then Tata)
Also - @paulmh5, light travelling through a fibre cable actually travels at around 65% of the speed of light in a vacuum.  Still fast enough for circuits that encircle the globe to be fast.

[paulmh5]

Quote from: Barry

Also - @paulmh5, light travelling through a fibre cable actually travels at around 65% of the speed of light in a vacuum.  Still fast enough for circuits that encircle the globe to be fast.

I stand corrected  :D

[zubel]

If you feel so inclined, you can view the BGP peering announcement changes here

[Kelly]

Deathtrap, we've been working with the NOC on this, and both _CN_ and PaulMH represent our network architecture and engineering teams, so you've absolutely got the attention of the people who make the changes and decisions here.
As far as I can tell, response times exiting from level 3s network are consistent.  (and therefore, irrelevant of the number of hops or variable response times reporting by intermediary hops) level3 are performing fine.  It really doesn't matter how many hops the traffic goes through if the last hop has a stable, low latency. 
What we believe is that there are two routes for traffic from level3 to Ubisoft.  Ubisoft themselves have chosen to peer with only 2 providers, meaning our traffic can only hit them through those two providers.  If one of this is preferred by Ubisoft (because they are cheaper for example) our traffic is likely to hit them via that route.  Our plan was to attempt to change some of our routing configuration to see if we can flip between those two providers to determine a difference, but we can't really control the route the traffic takes back as easily.  That might be stalled now due to the Verisign stuff.

[deathtrap]

Kelly, only earlier on  several hrs ago, the routing got changed for a brief period  using level3 and Tinet directly into ubisoft,  gave a lower ping than this dumb verisign routing gives  which by the way isn't that consistent at ubisoft , because  of the constantly switching route between 2 or more versign masked switches
Why can't traffic be routed via this tinet peering link  as that offers lower latency close to what i used to and still should have  to that ubisoft IP  that the game uses
I wouldn't say that anything over 100ms to ubisoft is low latency  it should always be below this  especially for fps type games

[paulmh5]

Quote from: deathtrap

Why can't traffic be routed via this tinet peering link...

If UBI are only announcing those prefixes from the Verisign network/peering then we have no options on changing the path.  If they are trying to mitigate a DDoS they won't want any traffic to them to bypass the scrubbing centre.
Once the DDoS situation is over the best we can do is try to depref our AS to TATA via Level3 by using some route metrics, there is however no guarantee this will change anything if UBI are choosing to prefer TATA and they prefer L3.

[AndyH]

I think Ubisoft have problems with Tinet (this was posted a couple of days ago):

Quote

Hello everyone, The issue being encountered by our customers in the UK doesn't lie with Uplay itself, rather it is a technical issue that has been encountered by our Internet Service Provider. However I do understand that from the customer's point of view the difference is arbitrary as your games are affected either way. We're working with our service provider in every way possible to get the connection issue resolved and let everyone play their games as intended.

BT customers were being routed from Level 3 to Tinet directly to Montreal (as deathtrap wants) - and they were having severe problems, even being unable to access www.ubisoft.com

[deathtrap]

Andy H it was a BT  or UBI issue  not a Tinet issue,  no one from any other ISP complained  about not being able to connect , and furthermore it only affected games that use the bloatware/spyware drm Uplay
As for them  only using verisign to prevent a DDos  i can accept that  on their own internal network, but masking a 3rd party's equipment  this is bonkers !!!!
And how do we know that ubi is soft are only going to use verisign  for a short period?  and how long are customers expected to tollerate this bs ? if that the case here, who's  to say it ain't permanent , the if  tinet route is still available  why can't plusnet use this ?

[Kelly]

> The if  tinet route is still available  why can't plusnet use this ?
The internet doesn't quite work as you think it does.  Even if we influence what direction packets are send outward, there is no guarantee they are going to come back the way we want them.
Re: the DDOS stuff, it might be that the experience would be even worse without it.  They could be under a serious attack right now and that is what's keeping their services up.

[AndyH]

Quote from: deathtrap

Andy H it was a BT  or UBI issue  not a Tinet issue,  no one from any other ISP complained  about not being able to connect , and furthermore it only affected games that use the bloatware/spyware drm Uplay

@ deathtrap
I don't think this is true.
BT customers were also unable to access the website http://www.ubisoft.com which indicates some kind of a routing problem. If you look at traceroutes from BT customers before 11-12 March 2014, they were being routed from BT's network > Level 3 > Tinet > Ubisoft. Now, they are being via the same vrsn.net route as Plusnet customers and things are running again. Ubisoft said they were in contact with BT and their ISP in the UK (which I assume must be Tinet). A problem was then identified by their (i.e. Ubisoft's) ISP in the UK, which was to blame for the lack of accessibility.
I have a Sky ADSL line (which is unused) - I will run a traceroute later and expect to see traffic routed the same way.
@ Kelly - What happens if packets are send via one route and come back another? Can this cause further problems?

[deathtrap]

Well i would sooner not be able to play due to a DDos than try and play games with induced lagg  (if ubi are actually suffering such ) these are only assumptions , ubi maybe  are going to use this masking nonsense  from now on  who is to say that  these ain't going to happen ? I BTW don't trust ubisoft  

[paulmh5]

Quote from: AndyH

@ Kelly - What happens if packets are send via one route and come back another? Can this cause further problems?

Yes and no.  It depends where it differs in paths and what devices it passes through, some boxes will track 'state' so need to see a complete flow.  Routers on the whole don't really care as long as it gets from A to B however trying to alter global routing in small parts without full end to end control could result in complications.
In this example though, the /24 is only available via the DDoS scrubbing centre so it won't make any odds, its always going to have to go via that.

[deathtrap]

Andy H  Fact one Yesterday during the short time that my traffic was getting routed via tinet spa  to ubisoft,  MY game authenticated i logged in without issues
I was able to browse their corporate web site and their forums and even log in to the forum, The BT vs tinet issue was a BT vs Ubisoft issue maybe a unforseen issue due to their CGN
that everyone has forgotten about, maybe this CGN sparked some kind of alert over at ubisoft   my peering got changed to a indirect route by AS 6453.net back then in November  
Fact number 2, in the past when i have been running a TCP ping  tinet has been one of the providers  being used along side AS6453.net  i have never had issues due to tinet
The only login authentication issues i have had have always been down to ubisoft servers having brain wind they do this frequently , but ubi doesn't care  as they have never fixed their servers in the 5-6yrs i have played their games