why is my ping so high?

[Twitch Profile]

lately when i play on ecgn my ping is double to triple what i have been used to in the past. at first i thought it was just my connection but all the other servers that i go to on occasion have not changed at all. how would i find out what is slowing down my connection to ecgn?

[YOOPER]

Maybe try a tracert to the beach server and look for the bottleneck.

[Twitch Profile]

ok i did that, now if i see something that looks like a bottleneck what do i do?

[cateye]

This happened to me recently, and lasted about three or four weeks. I usually get 40-60ms, and I was getting 250-300.

Usually the cause is an overloaded, misconfigured, or failing router somewhere between you and ECGN. For me, traceroutes showed my traffic going from Charter > ATT > Cogent Networks > ECGN's colo. Pings were fine up until that ATT to Cogent swap, then they'd go to hell.

If it's something beyond your provider's network, there's unfortunately little to nothing you as a consumer can do, but wait. Eventually the routing may change and your data will take a different pathway (and hopefully your pings will improve) or the problem, whatever it is, will be fixed.

If you post the results of your traceroute, we can see where the problem is, at least. Another resource is to compare your traceroute against the Lossy Router List on Broadband Reports. You can then at least see if there are others showing similar traffic problems.

[Twitch Profile]

here is the results of the trace route, i cant figure out how to save it as a text file so i can paste it in here, i hope this screenshot works though.

when it hops over to germany is where it has the problem it looks like. is it common for your route to hop over seas like this then back?

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

Man that is an ugly route...

No it's not supposed to go out to Europe and back...

Just out of curiosity, do some more traceroutes to other IP's or domains and see if they all go out to Germany and back...

[Twitch Profile]

i did about 10 more domains and the only other one i got that goes to europe is this forum address.

so what determines the route my connections takes? how often does this route change? would everyone in my area with this isp have a similar route? am i hosed?

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

Usually they will clear themselves up...how long has this been going on?

[Twitch Profile]

its been a month or more, i thought it was just my isp or router being inconsistent as usual. late at night and early am hours the ping drops dramatically. i can wait it out if thats what i gotta do i guess.

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

Looks like your ping is better now...

[Twitch Profile]

seems to drop right about 7pm eastern but still goes to germany. must be bandwidth issues or something.

[Person51 Profile]

Same reason I had to stop playing ECGN.
My ping would spike from 40 to 300 during gameplay.
Trace routes done ended up dropping completely.

My line had some issues though, as when you finally complain to Comcast enough, they'll send a Line Tech Supervisor(!) to fix yo' shit. Condensation in a neighbors line causing mine to drop packets... meh. Good news is that I got the fucking thing fixed.

I checked your trace, and I'm wondering too, why it's routing you internationally.. Keep bitching to your ISP.. They'll get the hint.
---------------------------------

Hops 2-5 Insight Broadband - your ISP

Hops 6-9 Sprint - who your ISP is buying they're bandwidth from
144.228.154.197 sl-gw36-chi-6-0.sprintlink.net ( our gateway )
144.232.26.69 sl-bb20-chi-5-0.sprintlink.net ( our backbone )
144.232.8.219 sl-st20-chi-12-0.sprintlink.net ( the shared tenant )
144.223.241.82 sl-franc2-8-0.sprinlink.net ( Euro server, no access )

Hop 10 - Handshake between Sprint and some Euro ISP
Hops 11-14 Handoff of bandwidth from Euro to Limelight
Hops 15-16 Handoff to the people ECGN buys bandwidth from.

Twitch -
I work at the network operations center at Sprint. When I saw that it was sending you to Europe, I got a bit interested and decided to take my home with me to work. We logged in to our Chicago switch site, and traced our route, and it was sending our trace to Germany too. The only thing we could think of, even more, you stating it goes bad around 7pm ET, is that the bandwidth we've allotted for Insight is getting used, dumping their traffic to the closest line possible. Its functional, but doesn't take into account the latency issue.
So how do you resolve this ?
Complain. If it was something the core team could regulate, I'd have them fix it. Since we couldn't find any "problems" we can't take active approach, just have to wait til Insight complains to us to investigate. If Sprint finds its on their end, it will be fixed. Otherwise, it will continue on up the escalation train.

On a side note, if you wanted a 4ms ping time to ECGN, you'd need to move here.

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

Didn't know you worked for Sprint...that's cool.

[Twitch Profile]

hey 51 thanks for the info. i sorta gave up complaining to insight about connection problems and bandwidth issues long ago, i dont think they give a shit really.

[Person51 Profile]

Didn't know you worked for Sprint...that's cool.

Its okay, I suppose. I always get the "so do you sell phones?" line.

hey 51 thanks for the info. i sorta gave up complaining to insight about connection problems and bandwidth issues long ago, i dont think they give a shit really.

Well, like I said, I had the same kinda problem. Guess you can either wait it out, or attempt to locate another somewhat populated server. I've been at HappyPenguin when ping was shot at ECGN. Not too bad after awhile.