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ColoradoKrid's avatar
ColoradoKrid
New Contributor
8 months ago

Slow Internet - TRACERT Request Timed Out

I work from home and since last week my internet access has slowed down a lot.  When I run a tracert I get a number of Request Timed Out responses:

Tracing route to 148.51.224.124 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     4 ms     2 ms     2 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    16 ms    11 ms    12 ms  10.42.112.1
  3    19 ms    11 ms    13 ms  100.120.181.36
  4    16 ms    17 ms    12 ms  100.120.176.96
  5    27 ms    26 ms    28 ms  dalsbprj01-ae1.rd.dl.cox.net [68.1.2.109]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10    50 ms    50 ms    51 ms  64.124.135.238.ipyx-291358-004-zyo.zip.zayo.com [64.124.135.238]
 11    55 ms    52 ms    51 ms  po301.cr02.ngspn.den1.imdc.com [148.51.252.78]
 12    54 ms    51 ms    52 ms  po341.ar13.ngspn.den1.imdc.com [148.51.253.169]
 13    53 ms    54 ms    51 ms  148.51.224.124

Trace complete.

Can anybody give me some insight into what is happening here and what is causing it?

4 Replies

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  • ExtraChrispy's avatar
    ExtraChrispy
    Contributor III
    8 months ago

    What you have here is a textbook example of what is called ICMP de-prioritization.  It appears hops 6-9 are configured to ignore ICMP (pings) when they are the intended destination, probably for bandwidth economy.  I'm not sure exactly what your intended destination here is although ARIN seems to suggest it's owned by a data center in Boston but more than likely the slowdowns are due to being routed through the Zayo.com network.  They're not known for being the best in the peering department.

  • ColoradoKrid's avatar
    ColoradoKrid
    New Contributor
    8 months ago

    I assume that is something Cox is doing, not something I am doing.  Is that correct?  There isn't anything I can do to improve this?

    • Darkatt's avatar
      Darkatt
      Valued Contributor III
      8 months ago

      We don't know those hops are on Cox. We know the Hop 5 responding router to the ping request was Cox, but the next one COULD be Level 3 or some other back haul system.

      Just because a ping isn't returned, doesn't mean it's a bad thing, OR a problem. Ping Requests have the lowest priority and routers can be configured to ignore them totally, OR, when the are busy, to ignore them. Remember your ping is measured in MS, Milliseconds, with is a Thousandth of a second. 

      BTW a search on the internet also returns this jewel - "Ping is measured in milliseconds, and the higher the number, the worse the lag time. Ping of about 100ms is considered average, and ping of 50ms or less is ideal for online gaming. Any number below 20ms is excellent.". 

    • ExtraChrispy's avatar
      ExtraChrispy
      Contributor III
      8 months ago

      Hop #5 indicates your traffic is being passed off to the next peering partner for which shall not be named due to the ICMP de-prioritization.  It's important to note that no actual loss is occurring here as if it were, you wouldn't be able to reach hops 10 and beyond.  Can't prove it but I'm going to blame Zayo.  If Iron Mountain Data Center's peering partner is Zayo I suspect things won't get better.