Sudden VERY slow internet

[gurnemanz]

Interesting, I've never used tracert (the Windows command line utility) before.

When I use it to trace the route from my PC to this forum (for3.org) it seems to go via London, NewYork, Washington, Atlanta to FutureQuest in Orlando (all in 128 ms) !!!!

No special knowledge but I thought it went in separate packets of data which each take a different route to the destination where they then join up again.

[johnb]

gurnemanz, according to Microsoft, tracert is "a command-line utility that you can use to trace the path that an Internet Protocol (IP) packet takes to its destination".

[Dave2002]

No special knowledge but I thought it went in separate packets of data which each take a different route to the destination where they then join up again.

tracert bounces off packets for 1 hop, 2 hops, 3 hops etc. and notes the route each time, and the time taken. It also notes where there are bottle necks - which get marked by asterisks (*). In theory each packet could go a different way, but usually they don't, so it's possible to build up a map of the routes.

johnb - I think possibly one of our US friends, called Mark who used to be very prominent on the old beeb boards might have something to do with your observation. Probably ff would know.

[johnb]

Dave, I had the same thought.

[Dave2002]

johnb

I wonder now whether some of my concerns about the slowness of this board which I've mentioned from time to time in the past actually are due to where it's physically located. However, if there were network caches along the way then this would not, mostly, be a problem.

Here's my take:

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to www.for3.org (69.5.3.100), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 dsldevice.lan (192.168.1.254) 12.631 ms 86.935 ms 100.220 ms
2 lo0-central10.pcl-ag04.plus.net (195.166.128.185) 49.291 ms 31.423 ms 32.132 ms
3 link-b-central10.pcl-gw02.plus.net (212.159.2.174) 33.030 ms 31.862 ms 31.918 ms
4 xe-0-2-0.pcl-cr02.plus.net (212.159.0.206) 33.636 ms 34.217 ms 31.473 ms
5 ae1.ptw-cr02.plus.net (195.166.129.2) 31.772 ms 32.135 ms 35.757 ms
6 ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net (195.166.129.4) 33.810 ms 31.835 ms 37.330 ms
7 te-4-2.car5.london1.level3.net (217.163.45.249) 33.070 ms 32.769 ms 31.620 ms
8 ae-52-52.csw2.london1.level3.net (4.69.139.120) 126.957 ms 126.114 ms 128.191 ms
9 ae-56-221.ebr2.london1.level3.net (4.69.153.129) 148.407 ms 128.026 ms 127.148 ms
10 ae-43-43.ebr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.69.137.74) 127.290 ms 126.194 ms 126.159 ms
11 ae-56-56.ebr2.washington12.level3.net (4.69.201.62) 128.376 ms 128.354 ms 125.101 ms
12 ae-1-100.ebr1.washington12.level3.net (4.69.143.213) 126.838 ms 126.693 ms 127.675 ms
13 ae-6-6.ebr1.atlanta2.level3.net (4.69.148.105) 125.491 ms 125.367 ms 125.612 ms
14 ae-1-8.bar1.orlando1.level3.net (4.69.137.149) 129.536 ms 128.632 ms 126.923 ms
15 ae-6-6.car1.orlando1.level3.net (4.69.133.77) 125.833 ms 126.465 ms 125.878 ms
16 futurequest.car1.orlando1.level3.net (4.53.44.126) 126.059 ms 128.335 ms 126.177 ms
17 g.core-x-03.futurequest.net (69.5.31.236) 126.832 ms 126.921 ms 126.519 ms
18 for3.org (69.5.3.100) 128.075 ms 125.358 ms 124.972 ms

Generally this shouldn't be too big a problem, but I hadn't realised we were going global in this way.