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Michael2020's avatar
Michael2020
Contributor
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Internet Performance Poor Latency - Repeat of Prior Problem Resolved

This is familiar problem returned. There is now a server showing up between my home and my offsite server that is causing unacceptable latency problems.

The IP "192..." is my router at home and the IP "74..." is my offsite server about 5 miles from my home. The server IP "68.1.0.242" is the problem.

It's a cox network server that is introducing latency that affects my timeouts when I try to reach my offsite server. My server is hosted at IC2 - a hosting service who has looked at my latency problem before and concluded the same thing when pinging the network from IC2 to my home.

In the past when I complained about this problem for months, Cox network services - which is not reachable via any traditional support channel, resolved the problem without notice. My normal latency - I generally test this daily - is about 14-17ms for this entire hop.

Now based on past experience, please don't ask me to reset my modem/router or try a hardwire connection. I have done both of these to appease other "expert" posters but these yield no differences because you an immediately see from the trace route provided that there are no latency issues going through my modem to the outside world.

To illustrate that point, here is a trace route to my Cox Name Server.

Illustrated here is a ping going out and back to my Cox Name Server whereas my modem presents only 3ms of latency using my wireless gigabit network connection and the first Cox server I hit is only 11ms of latency total and the name server is of course IP 68.105.28.11 with a very low latency.

Cox Network Latency
Cox Network Problem
  • Michael2020's avatar
    Michael2020

    Really no help on this forum and no help from Cox Support. The problem was fixed when someone noticed the issue and changed the server routing. See the difference.

    Now I have 15ms end to end with my server across town and this is how it has been for many years using Cox as the carrier. Now everyone thinks that that 96ms end to end is not a significant issue with bandwidth but I'm hear to tell you that 6.4X the latency is 6.4 less bandwidth and it shows up as long load times, long search times on my offsite server. It is not the service I signed up for.

    Note that even my ping time through my VPN was only 50ms and VPN is a ** shoot for bandwidth - you give up bandwidth at the expense of having an anonymous server IP somewhere in the world.

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  • Michael2020's avatar
    Michael2020
    Contributor

    Just to provide more clarity - I have tested this with hardline and wireless, and I have reset my modem and seen no change in performance (I did wonder if the routing would change if I reset my modem - I hoped - but no, the routing seems stationary and not subject to resetting my equipment)

  • grymwulf's avatar
    grymwulf
    Contributor II

    From your issue with a .07 second (70ms) increase in pings I'm betting you are talking about communicating with a game server.  It could be mumble/TS3 but I've not seen ping be that big of an issue at that low level.  Normally I've never seen anyone have an issue with that low latency, but hey to each their own.

    Do us a favor, check the ping to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to see if your path goes through the same router.  It is suspicious that this router does seem to introduce more delay than all the others combined, that does normally indicate too high of a load, or improper load balancing.  That could do more than increase the latency, it could lead to dropped packets which would affect gaming much more than a 70ms latency.

    And you are right, nothing you will do on your end will really change the route your packets take. 

  • Michael2020's avatar
    Michael2020
    Contributor

    The server is an offsite file server that I own and house at IC2, an offsite data center. I have a long history with this server - years on this same Cox network.

    I had this problem before and after about a month the problem disappeared along with the Cox server causing it.

    I have tested this network route for years at 14-18ms.

    I have tested it hardwired, wireless, difference computers in my home, and from the server to my router - all show the same latency.

    Here is the current up to date trace route.

    2ms through my router doesn't look like a problem to me. Right now this is a wireless connection. The next jump is to a IP 10. number and that's the first server in the outside world - 13ms is not an issue to me. But when I get to 68.0.1.242, now I see the big latency jump. And the next one adds another 20ms. 

    Now how this shows up in file service applications is that we request a connection or a file and we intermittently lose the request and have to make it again.

    Here is the ping you asked about for 8.8.8.8 and following is the second 8.8.4.4

    and here is the ping to the server which is about 5 miles away.

    and here is the ping to the Cox Name Server for reference - all of these look fine to me.

    and here is a trace route to the same offsite server using my VPN. As you know, my VPN goes through all the same network modem, hardware, etc. but uses another offsite server to direct my traffic anonymously. Now see what happens to latency - about 50ms is normal for a VPN so that's the overhead cost of being anonymous but note that the routing is no long through the Cox server and I no longer have any latency to my server other than the VPN itself.

  • Michael2020's avatar
    Michael2020
    Contributor

    Really no help on this forum and no help from Cox Support. The problem was fixed when someone noticed the issue and changed the server routing. See the difference.

    Now I have 15ms end to end with my server across town and this is how it has been for many years using Cox as the carrier. Now everyone thinks that that 96ms end to end is not a significant issue with bandwidth but I'm hear to tell you that 6.4X the latency is 6.4 less bandwidth and it shows up as long load times, long search times on my offsite server. It is not the service I signed up for.

    Note that even my ping time through my VPN was only 50ms and VPN is a ** shoot for bandwidth - you give up bandwidth at the expense of having an anonymous server IP somewhere in the world.