High Ping query: CityFibre Pro II 900mb

[aidej]

Hi, I am a new customer who has just migrated in from Virgin Media's Gig1 product which had terrible ping results amongst other issues and hence why I left as soon as City Fibre connected my street here in Glasgow. One advantage of the move to FTTP was, I believed, a low ping which would help with my gaming more than anything else.

Imagine my surprise when I have discovered that for the past 3 weeks since I was connected, my ping results have been worse than those of Virgin Media! My Vodafone ping results from Glasgow using most Speedtest sites and apps when connected by ethernet range from 20ms to 35ms, not the 5ms-10ms I had expected from FTTP. Speedtest apps also seem to think I live in London and it looks like my connection is being routed through Vodafone's London operations. Does anyone have any advice, surely Vodafone have more local routing options available?

[Ripshod]

Run a quick traceroute to bbc.com and post the results here for us, though I think I know what the problem is. 

[aidej]

Thanks @Ripshod - I've run a few Traceroutes below:

Tracing route to bbc.com [151.101.64.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 4 ms 3 ms vodafone.ultrahub [192.168.1.1]
2 21 ms 22 ms 20 ms 84.65.64.1
3 21 ms 21 ms 22 ms 63.130.172.39
4 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 90.255.251.105
5 20 ms 21 ms 21 ms 151.101.64.81

Trace complete.

Tracing route to google.com [172.217.169.78]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 8 ms 3 ms 3 ms vodafone.ultrahub [192.168.1.1]
2 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms 84.65.64.1
3 21 ms * 22 ms 63.130.172.39
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 27 ms 23 ms 23 ms 216.239.48.217
6 23 ms 24 ms 21 ms 172.253.66.101
7 21 ms 22 ms 21 ms lhr48s09-in-f14.1e100.net [172.217.169.78]

Trace complete.

Tracing route to amazon.co.uk [54.239.33.58]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms vodafone.ultrahub [192.168.1.1]
2 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 84.65.64.1
3 23 ms 21 ms 21 ms 63.130.172.39
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 21 ms 20 ms 23 ms 54.239.101.59
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 34 ms 32 ms 32 ms 54.239.33.58

Trace complete.

[Ripshod]

84.65.64.1 is the gateway in Surrey Quays, London. So your connection goes almost the length of the country across vodafone's network, before it even meets the internet.

Sadly it's a situation a lot of us are having to deal with with no sign of a resolution. Vodafone just call it "load balancing". 

I'm near Leeds and I'm routed via Edinburgh.

It's a sorry state of affairs that won't get resolved, other than a freak accident. 

[aidej]

thanks @Ripshod  - I really appreciate your feedback, its very disappointing to hear that others are suffering from this same, and well known latency issue.

My question for Vodafone support would be: is there anything being done to address it? Have Vodafone support even acknowledged there is a widespread issue and offered a solution? 

[Ripshod]

Sadly it not recognised as an issue. Load Balancing actually makes sense. However this implementation of it is just pretty d$#m poor.

 The routing is controlled by their servers. Even a level 3 tech can't change that setting (allegedly). 

[Tre-Keyz]

If I live near London, am I likely to still possibly be routed through somewhere way up North and face the same issues, or will I more likely be using the gateway near here and not have such bad ping? I just signed up and I'm trying to decide if I should cancel while in my cooling off period.

[purrbox]

Unfortunately, you are part of the load balancing deployed on Vodafones network. A lot of people in England are routed via Edinburgh and see even higher pings than what you get.

There was a huge thread about it. The end game was that there's nothing the customer services team can do, other than encourage you to contact their social media team.

You can contact CS, and they'll walk you through a whole host of boiler plate tests, but it won't change anything.

The people in charge of this are the network infrastructure team. They are non customer facing and see load balancing as a good thing as it alleviates congestion which would otherwise effect download speeds.

You will get some posters jump in stating that I'm incorrect and there are "upgrades coming". I've been waiting 2 years and still in the same situation.

[Jayach]

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@purrbox wrote:

You will get some posters jump in stating that I'm incorrect and there are "upgrades coming". I've been waiting 2 years and still in the same situation.

---

Definately not saying you are wrong, and I'm sure upgrades are coming (but the network will always be getting upgrades, just because usage is forever going up)

I'm currently on Surrey Quays, like @aidej, but that is brilliant for me as I'm in S.E. Essex, but I have previously been on Manchester/Leeds (don't think I've ever been on Edinburgh) but it does show that our Gateway servers do change.

[CrimsonLiar]

On Vodafone FTTC we initially recorded our gateway as being Manchester Salford Quays, but later it changed to Leeds.  Which I think is the nearest major data centre Vodafone uses.  I think after a damage incident we were connected for a few days to a third-party datacentre on Teesside.  So no issues there really.

Our latency to the Cloudflare servers since moving from VF FTTC to BT FTTP is about 0.3ms (measured at the router) better than it used to be - so not much, certainly not as much as some would have you believe it ought to be.