IOL pings

SantaHoe

Hey-diddly-ho...
Pings have been brutal for me the past week, I'm wondering how many people this is effecting...

Tracing route to games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 623 ms 46 ms 31 ms lo3.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.175]
2 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms vlan501.rt502.cwt.esat.net [193.95.137.125]
3 218 ms 218 ms 624 ms vlan54.rt002.cwt.esat-x.com [193.95.130.161]
4 500 ms 31 ms 30 ms vlan59.rt508.cwt.esat.net [193.95.132.42]
5 46 ms 31 ms 31 ms games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]

This isn't just a fluke either, every time I run that tracert, there's stupidly high spikes somewhere on Esats network.
I'm experiencing woefull packet loss aswell.

(Whitehall exchange)

bubbles

Tracing route to games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms lo3.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.175]
3 21 ms 23 ms 23 ms vlan501.rt502.cwt.esat.net [193.95.137.125]
4 29 ms 28 ms 24 ms vlan54.rt002.cwt.esat-x.com [193.95.130.161]
5 24 ms 22 ms 24 ms vlan59.rt508.cwt.esat.net [193.95.132.42]
6 23 ms 28 ms 28 ms games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]

On IOL BB off the ship street exchange

tammy

heres what i'm getting from games1.iol.ie

1 10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.1.1
2 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms lo3.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.175]
3 20 ms 20 ms 30 ms vlan501.rt501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.137.124]
4 20 ms 21 ms 30 ms vlan51.rt001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.137]
5 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms vlan57.rt508.cwt.esat.net [193.95.132.26]
6 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]

not too shabby

/me smells notepad..

joePC

All good @ this end.

Thanks joePC

BKtje

Tracing route to games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 10 ms 10 ms * lo1.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.176]
2 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms vlan500.rt501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.124]
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms vlan51.rt001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.137]
4 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms vlan57.rt508.cwt.esat.net [193.95.132.26]
5 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms games1.iol.ie [193.120.123.136]

Seems fine to me. If its a different node everytime it could be something on your machine. If a virus is sending out stuff every so often it will cause a spike as your upload is used. Dunno if this is the problem but just a suggestion what it could be.

SantaHoe

Well no, I'm pretty well locked-down here... regular virus scans haven't shown anything unusual, nor has there been any odd port usage.
Still getting crappy pings, only this time it's another esat server...

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 31 ms 31 ms 16 ms lo3.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.175]
2 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms vlan500.rt501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.124]
3 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms vlan51.rt001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.137]
4 15 ms 32 ms 31 ms ge1-0.core002.cwt.esat.net [193.95.129.2]
5 281 ms 250 ms 250 ms pos2-0.br001.inex.esat.net [193.95.131.6]
6 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms rt001inx.netsource.ie [193.1.208.199]
7 15 ms 32 ms 31 ms suez.hosting365.ie [212.17.63.4]
8 15 ms 31 ms 32 ms sneezy.hosting365.ie [82.195.133.195]
9 47 ms 31 ms 31 ms boards.ie [82.195.131.128]

Trace complete.

I've even asked a user from netsource to ping that server on hop 5 and it's the same high ping for him.
I can't even moan at IOL now because their support lines are closed today, how nice for them.
I'm adding Esat/BT to my list of 'Hope they die a horrible death' right beside Eircom.
Oh well, another 9/10 months of the contract left before they can kiss my arse goodbye forever.
Cowboys.

MrPinK

Originally posted by SantaHoe
Tracing route to www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 31 ms 31 ms 16 ms lo3.bas501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.175]
2 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms vlan500.rt501.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.124]
3 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms vlan51.rt001.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.137]
4 15 ms 32 ms 31 ms ge1-0.core002.cwt.esat.net [193.95.129.2]
5 281 ms 250 ms 250 ms pos2-0.br001.inex.esat.net [193.95.131.6]
6 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms rt001inx.netsource.ie [193.1.208.199]
7 15 ms 32 ms 31 ms suez.hosting365.ie [212.17.63.4]
8 15 ms 31 ms 32 ms sneezy.hosting365.ie [82.195.133.195]
9 47 ms 31 ms 31 ms boards.ie [82.195.131.128]

Trace complete.

From this I'd say there's nothing wrong with your latency at all. Pinging routers doesn't give an accurate measure of latency, because most routers will ignore echo requests until they've got no other traffic to deal with. The fact that you've got a lower time to get to hop 6, which goes through hop 5, proves that your packets aren't being held up at hop 5. It's just not responding to your pings right away.

SantaHoe

Interesting, however the end results when connected to (for example) a halflife server show constant packet-loss and incredable ping spikes, actually to the
point where it's painful to play.
I'm duel booting 2k and XP at the moment and both OS setups suffer awfully from ping spikes and packet loss.

Yet the same game servers were just fine, for say last month.
It's a strange coincidence then, that my tracerts show massive spikes on certain servers in esats network when I didn't before... right around the time it was working nicely.
Although I don't doubt your knowledge on the subject, I'm just saying that maybe these unusualy high ping response times are indicative of an overloaded node.

Perhaps I'm being too demanding of quality of service here since most users who just use the service for the web/downloads wouldn't notice this... but online gaming is the primary reason for my signing up with IOL in the first place and this is really pissing me off.
No more 12 month contracts for me.

MrPinK

'ping boards.ie -n 50' will show spikes and packet loss much better than traceroutes will