High Ping Recently & Suggested ISP Options?

Hello everyone!
I live in Paryavaran Complex, Neb Sarai, Saket, New Delhi 110030.

For the past 2 years I have been using a local internet provider called Rocknet. It is a 2Mbps unlimited plan for 1500 a month (see attached image), and my experience with this connection has been wonderful. It is TRULY unlimited, I have witnessed very little downtime in the past two years, and their customer care, although a little slow, has been helpful since it is a local provider.

I play League of Legends on the Garena Server (Singapore Server) and up until recently I used to have 80 - 90 ping. Ever since Cyclone Vardah, the ping has been at a constant 200 - 250 and I have been experiencing heavy packet loss. I used PingPlotter to ping the server IP in Singapore and have attached an image with the results. It has been over a month and the ping has not returned to normal, and due to the fact that I am a heavy gamer, I am looking to switch ISP's, and that is why I am posting this thread.

Budget : 2000 per month
Plan : Unlimited or 150 - 200 GB FUP
Speed : 50 - 100 Mbps
Post FUP Speed : 2mbps

Please suggest an ISP for Saket , South Delhi. I have looked into Airtel and they do not provide a wired connection to this area.


Speedtest (SpeedTest)
PingPlotter Test (PingPlotter Test)

The issue is due to undersea cable cut. I can see in the image that it follows Airtel routing which means your ISP gets bandwidth form Airtel. My ISP does the same and my ping jumps on the same IP as seen in the screenshots. Btw, I'm from Bihar.

@kRuSnIk , Thank you for the quick response!
I see, and how would we go about trying to fix this? I suppose we cant do anything from our end to fix it? :frown:

@kRuSnIk where did you come to know of undersea cable cut? is it still in progress or known when it will be resolved?

@vishalrao, the last cyclone cut the TIC and i2i cables, if you google you'll see the related news (strangely the Tata cut is only being reported on bangaleshi websites, but can confirm cause since jan my pings to Blizzard SG has gone from 80 to 300) TraceRT shows they are routing all their traffic via Mumbai to EU and forward as opposed to Chennai and to SG direct.

No idea about any repair work though, Tata refuses to connect me to their NOC and their Customer Care is pretty laughable, at best.

Some links for reference:
Vardah damages undersea cable, internet slows down - Times of India

Linode: Major cuts to several submarine cables to Singapore

I can confirm there are issues with the Tata Indicom cable (TIISCS err). However, Airtel's i2i is perfectly fine and is operational as of this time, so if your connection is going through Airtel then I guess you need to complain? Here's a trace-route to the same IP.

Tracing route to 203.117.172.253 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 29 ms 29 ms 28 ms 61.95.240.129
5 62 ms 62 ms 62 ms 182.79.201.73
6 66 ms 98 ms 64 ms 203.117.164.9
7 64 ms 64 ms 64 ms w118012041.w118012.starhub.net.sg [203.118.12.41]
8 64 ms 64 ms 63 ms 203.118.15.13
9 64 ms 63 ms 63 ms 203.118.6.210
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 63 ms 63 ms 63 ms an-ats-loc10.starhub.net.sg [203.118.15.194]
13 64 ms 63 ms 64 ms 203.117.190.30
14 63 ms 63 ms 63 ms 203.117.172.253

Trace complete.

Click to expand...

Tata's ETR seems to be end of this month (or week) but I can attest to their NOC folks not being talkative to indirect customers. I got my ETR from Azure who's also affected and apparently are singled homed which is stupid but I guess that's for another discussion.

@Funkatronic
So us gamers are basically screwed?

End of the month eh? I wish their NOC was as open as Airtels used to be. Anyway, here's my tracert from Pune to one of the AWS SG EC2's
As you can see, they do take a really long route around.
Btw @AgentX, should Azure or other enterprises be routed via SEAMEWE4? Considering Tata partly owns that one too?

Tracing route to ec2-46-51-216-14.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com [46.51.216.14]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 2 ms 3 ms 192.168.1.1
2 306 ms 69 ms 71 ms 49.248.48.1
3 398 ms 431 ms 46 ms static-234.79.156.182-tataidc.co.in [182.156.79.234]
4 187 ms * 254 ms static-2.79.156.182-tataidc.co.in [182.156.79.2]
5 1026 ms 379 ms 61 ms 10.117.225.90
6 70 ms 62 ms 69 ms 14.141.63.185.static-Mumbai.vsnl.net.in [14.141.63.185]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 91 ms 89 ms 66 ms ix-ae-0-4.tcore1.MLV-Mumbai.as6453.net [180.87.38.5]
9 289 ms 141 ms 199 ms if-ae-5-2.tcore1.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net [180.87.38.126]
10 204 ms 197 ms 240 ms if-ae-2-2.tcore2.WYN-Marseille.as6453.net [80.231.217.2]
11 * 329 ms 143 ms if-ae-7-2.tcore2.FNM-Frankfurt.as6453.net [80.231.200.78]
12 227 ms 410 ms 202 ms if-ae-4-2.tcore1.FR0-Frankfurt.as6453.net [195.219.87.18]
13 176 ms 153 ms 305 ms ae-14.r02.frnkge03.de.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.8.173]
14 145 ms 173 ms 156 ms ae-5.r24.frnkge08.de.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.162]
15 532 ms 501 ms 440 ms ae-13.r20.sngpsi05.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.7.11]
16 579 ms 810 ms 425 ms ae-2.r00.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.147]
17 551 ms 437 ms 420 ms ae-0.amazon.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [116.51.17.46]
18 438 ms 424 ms 517 ms 52.93.8.98
19 413 ms 496 ms 434 ms 52.93.8.117
20 550 ms 428 ms 428 ms 203.83.223.21
21 459 ms 497 ms 501 ms ec2-46-51-216-14.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com [46.51.216.14]

Click to expand...

Azure and others are probably on SEAMEWE4 @Funkatronic as the trace goes via Mumbai (albeit it looks like their own internal network). It's still better than yours which is going all over everywhere. Reminds me of BSNL..

Edit: Article mentioning same ETR as I said earlier :
Repair work slows down Internet service

Edit2: I don't know why they're not using the Chennai part of SEAMEWE4. Something wrong there? Guess we'll never know.

@AgentX @Funkatronic
Oh my god I'm such a noob, I don't understand all these techy terms :'(

Could you guys simply explain if this problem might be solved soon? Will switching ISP's help?

I suggest you be patient. Switching ISPs cause of undersea cable cut/repair would entail you'd have to switch them every time theres a large cyclone or some idiotic ship lays anchor where they're not supposed to. Also, as discussed earlier, i have no idea if Airtel's routing is affected as well. As far as I know, Reliance (our office connection) and You Broadband are routing absolutely fine.

I suggest just wait and watch.

Airtel is fine, complain to your ISP and tell them to fix routing if you're on Airtel transit. Only TATA is affected and it is expected to be resolved by the end of the month.

@AgentX
I doubt theyll do anything about the routing, I spoke to Garena Server's Customer Support after I started to experience the high ping and they made me run the ping plotter test and noticed the high packet drops, and asked me to do the same, contact my ISP and ask them to fix the routing. I did so, and they have done nothing about it.

AgentX said:

Edit2: I don't know why they're not using the Chennai part of SEAMEWE4. Something wrong there? Guess we'll never know.

Click to expand...

Because chennai landing station of most submarine cable has been damaged.

Don't know how you r getting better pings because I am getting same ping as OP and I am using airtel broadband.

My pings have normalized. Getting ~140ms to the IP given by OP, earlier +350ms.