Erratic ping times with BT?

MickeyD

Over the past few days, I've noticed my ping times becoming erratic - today my ping to google.ie is over 800ms. It seems to be a problem with one of BT's routers from the traceroute:

3 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms vlan103.rt002.bmt.esat.net [193.95.142.1]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms ge0-0.core002.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.18]
5 823 ms 818 ms 823 ms t2a2-p9-0-0.ie-dub2.eu.bt.net 166.49.198.137]

It has never happened before thursday (usually the ping is around 100ms or so), and I havn't switched packages nor am I over my cap. It was fixed yesterday but then started happening again late last night and has continued till now. Has anyone else noticed this or have any ideas what might be causing it?

zil

I've had the exact same problem. Started happening a week or two ago. I contacted the sysadmin of the server in question. I got this reply.

We have had utilization problems on our interconnect indeed.
Have you investigated with Esat?, they are sending us more traffic over the interconnect due to waiting for delivery of extra capacity in their network.

We have taken measures to circumvent the problem, waiting for the extra capacity with Esat.


Thanks,

As soon as i received this the issue resolved itself . Yay to the guy running the server. I forwarded the reply to bt tech support and asked about this extra capacity, I got a bull**** cookie cutter reply, which i dutifully went through anyway. They responded by saying that was no problem with my connection. Of course there wasn't it had just been fixed.

Issue resurfaced today and I've spent 30mins in a queue with tech support waiting to talk to someone before I hung up.

Really poor show from bt in all aspects. Hope this doesnt continue for long.

MickeyD

Indeed. It's unfortunate as I havn't had any problems with BT in over a year (barring initial subscribtion troubles). It seems like if you are lucky enough to be getting good service its great, but if theres a problem, god help you :P

Sarn

Hmm average ping is over 500 ms to BT at the mo. Thought pages were loading slowly.

zil

Well according to their phone line they are having problems with people who have a 06* number. Which may be why your having difficulty loading pages. Personally I can browse lots of websites just fine. Its only when i route through the affected server that I get the problem. Which is unfortunatly the routing for most of the games I play

Orion

Disaster connecting to any servers on the continent. Ireland and UK servers are ok. Looks like a capacity problem on the European interconnecter alright.

To Titan - UK
Tracing route to 85.232.32.199 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.1
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    12 ms    11 ms    13 ms  bas003.bmt.esat.net [193.95.142.244]
  4    13 ms    14 ms    12 ms  vlan101.rt001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.141.1]
  5    12 ms    12 ms    12 ms  ge0-0.core001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.1]
  6     *       12 ms    13 ms  pos3-0.core001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.131.41]
  7     *       25 ms    24 ms  pos2-0.br001.ldn.esat.net [193.95.131.14]
  8    24 ms    26 ms    24 ms  linx-gw0.enta.net [195.66.224.151]
  9    25 ms    24 ms    31 ms  th-router1.titaninternet.co.uk [81.31.121.26]
 10    25 ms    26 ms    25 ms  217.77.191.4
 11    27 ms    27 ms    26 ms  rb-2-switch.titaninternet.co.uk [85.232.33.6]
 12    26 ms    27 ms    27 ms  85.232.32.199

To World of Warcraft Login server (France)
Tracing route to eu.logon.worldofwarcraft.com [80.239.178.115]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.1
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    13 ms    13 ms    22 ms  bas003.bmt.esat.net [193.95.142.244]
  4    12 ms    13 ms    12 ms  vlan101.rt001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.141.1]
  5    12 ms    12 ms    12 ms  ge1-0.core002.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.2]
  6   662 ms   667 ms   675 ms  t2a2-p9-0-0.ie-dub2.eu.bt.net [166.49.198.137
  7   663 ms   659 ms   667 ms  t2c1-ge6-0.ie-dub2.eu.bt.net [166.49.158.11]
  8   665 ms   664 ms   670 ms  t2c1-p4-0.uk-lon2.eu.bt.net [166.49.195.41]
  9   680 ms   679 ms   677 ms  t2c2-ge6-2.uk-lon2.eu.bt.net [166.49.164.170]
 10   671 ms   678 ms   674 ms  t2c1-ge4-2.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.208.6]
 11   672 ms   670 ms   659 ms  t2a1-pc1.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.135.98]
 12   647 ms   642 ms   631 ms  166-49-211-34.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.34]
 13   614 ms   616 ms   628 ms  ldn-bb1-pos6-1-0.telia.net [213.248.65.237]

To  an Unreal Tournament server in Holland
Tracing route to 82.96.113.57 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.1
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    12 ms    12 ms    15 ms  bas003.bmt.esat.net [193.95.142.244]
  4    13 ms    12 ms    12 ms  vlan101.rt001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.141.1]
  5    13 ms    15 ms    12 ms  ge1-0.core002.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.2]
  6   864 ms   806 ms   809 ms  t2a2-p9-0-0.ie-dub2.eu.bt.net [166.49.198.137]
  7   662 ms   670 ms   676 ms  t2c1-ge6-0.ie-dub2.eu.bt.net [166.49.158.11]
  8   692 ms   685 ms   682 ms  t2c1-p4-0.uk-lon2.eu.bt.net [166.49.195.41]
  9   694 ms   683 ms  ^C

To Unreal.ie
Tracing route to unreal.ie [193.120.123.142]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.1
  2     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    11 ms    14 ms    13 ms  bas003.bmt.esat.net [193.95.142.244]
  4    12 ms    12 ms    13 ms  vlan101.rt001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.141.1]
  5    12 ms    13 ms    12 ms  ge0-0.core001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.1]
  6    13 ms    12 ms    13 ms  pos3-0.core001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.131.41
  7    13 ms   111 ms    14 ms  vlan2.rt001.cwt.esat-x.com [193.95.129.3]
  8    13 ms    12 ms    13 ms  vlan57.rt508.cwt.esat.net [193.95.132.26]
  9    14 ms    12 ms    13 ms  duff.unreal.ie [193.120.123.142]

MickeyD

Don't want to jinx anything, but it looks like this has been fixed - traffic seems to be going over different routes now.

zil

Aye it was fine yesterday, but seems to be routing throught the effected server again today This is getting a bit silly. I managed to get through to tech support yesterday and they told me they weren't even aware of the issue and coudnt give me a time frame for a fix.

Orion

It seems it depends on which exchange you're going through. This happened a couple of years ago too. Try restarting your router and running a tracert to a server on the continent. If all steps are below 100ms then you're ok. If one - the T2 one - is 200+ restart the router again.

ai ing

Still pretty uneven over here. Getting routed through that t2a2 server as well.

Pinging boards.ie [82.195.136.250] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.120.123.142: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.120.123.142: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.120.123.142: bytes=32 time=291ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.120.123.142: bytes=32 time=162ms TTL=60