Kerala Vision Broadband FTTH - User Experience

  • Thread starter Thread starter varkey
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 344
  • Views Views 92,091
Now that I am evaluating Kerala Vision broadband, thought I would create a thread to share my experience. My LCO provides broadband services from BSNL and Kerala Vision, so thought would be good to evaluate Kerala Vision as well.

Getting the account setup was pretty easy, cause there was no need for additional cabling or ONT etc. I shared a photo and ID/address proof doc to the LCO, and the same day evening he setup my account and shared the credentials. The LCO shares the same OLT for all services, so on my end, I just needed to configure my OpenWRT device appropriately.

Initially I didn't get the Kerala Vision VLAN, so I had to reach out to the LCO's tech guy who shared the id. I added the VLAN to the switch (my ONT is a transparent bridge, so I needed no change on the ONT) which created an interface and all I needed to do was add the necessary interface configuration with the PPPoE credentials.

Screenshot 2020-03-06 at 7.47.29 PM.webp


Screenshot 2020-03-06 at 7.48.05 PM.webp


As you can see, they use CG-NAT which is disappointing but other than BSNL and few others nobody else gives public IP addresses. Also I liked the fact that things just worked on first try 😆 (the above screenshot is from my first try to connect)

Will add more details as I explore more.
 
Click to expand...
Guys, I just had a word with the lco and they said KV has told all of the lcos to cap the maximum speed to 20 Mbps due to the heavy load. Thats a huge disappointment for me. I don't think we can do anything in this regard.
 
Yes. I heard they added some 40Gbps to their backend capacity this week and will probably be rationing it to new customers carefully. I am getting consistent pings and speeds from last couple of days after this capacity increase but I believe it will probably be only till they add new customers and network gets overloaded again.
 
@lorograchi *for New connections.

The connections already taken aren't being limited to 20Mbps. That would create a legal issue of deliberate QoS impairment of a service after signing a contract with a customer.

All NEW connections being sold are only 20Mbps temporarily.
 
Ameen said:
Bsnl connection have been same for such things for the past one week. But that's happening due to network upgradation they are going through, ping to local servers seems fine for now.
For Singapore it's still spiking around 250-300 due to re routing 😢

So please do a prior testing, I hope it would be fine though.
Click to expand...
seems the issue is fixed over here singapore back to 70-80ms
 
Guys, my plan expires tomorrow and I have asked the operator to enable the online option but he doesnt know about his. I called up kv and they said the operator should know this. Why the hell is this option given to lcos and not KV directly since the money goes to them? It's not like the lcos get a commission or anything based on this.
 

Should be but depends on which server you are testing when I get 70ms my friend do get 50ms while playing games on singapore
 
Happy to report that Kerala Vision seems to have really gotten to business and updated their routing tables and upstream peers. Getting consistent good pings, if not persistent speeds at all times. Capacity addition seems to be doing the job, albeit temporarily. More work to be done but good they're playing catch up in this hypercompetitive space, which could be the next big thing for India's digital revolution.

Here's a set of speedtests I performed. As you can see, some more routing issues to be sorted out with their upstream providers, but overall a massive jump in performance compared to just 2 weeks back.
Screenshot (18).webp
 
Last edited:
I agree, considerable improvement from 2 weeks ago. I did some investigations regarding the routing and upstream and these are some of my findings.

The two distinct IP blocks owned by KV 43.229.0.0/16 and 103.0.0.0/24 (subnets are wrong) have different routing tables. We can see slight performance difference if we switch to other one. I could switch between them by randomly reconnecting my PPPoE connection. Though there are route differences in the path taken to upstream, the upstream itself doesn't seem to be different.

Major upstreams used to exit my KV traffic are via Airtel, PowerGrid and Mumbai exchanges. Other upstreams listed under KCCL but didnt really encounter in my typical use are BSNL NIB and Vodafone. All Google traffic (Youtube) exits via PowerGrid. All Facebook (WhatsApp, Instagram), AWS and many other major tech companies exit via Mumbai Exchanges. Cloudflare and other traffic which I use for my work exits via Airtel. And Airtel seems to be biggest bottleneck for KV at the moment (Probably from the downtime of Vodafone since few days back?). Most of the ping delays and packet drops are for traffic that exits via Airtel.

Since Google traffic was mostly unaffected, I brought up a VM in Google Cloud and started my custom OpenVPN server to route my traffic via Google ASN. It mostly works as expected in times when there is heavy congestion via Airtel upstream. I was able to bring my work meeting traffic with avg ping delay of 1000ms down to 100ms. Since Google doesn't have free servers in Mumbai, I had to use Singapore DC but it only adds 1 or 2 ms more.

Note: All the above are observational findings with my limited understanding of how networks work. I do not have any insights into the ISP other that what I can see via external tools. I might be wrong.
 
That's actually a smart idea. Yeah your findings seem to be the same I've managed to observe too over the past few days.

I see peering via Vodafone India to services like Instagram. But again, like you said, it could be that the public IP subnet I am NATed to is being routed via Vodafone. It's a small-scale way of static load-balancing I guess. Just split up all the IPs they own into groups and then route each group via a different upstream.

Except I don't see PowerGrid anymore in tracerts to Google. They seem to either be using a transparent proxy or maybe, started directly peering with Google now?
 
Last edited:
pillaicha said:
I see peering via Vodafone India to services like Instagram.
Click to expand...
Yes, Instagram is routed via Vodafone for me as well. I only checked Facebook and WhatsApp earlier and thought all Facebook products might also be following same.

pillaicha said:
Except I don't see PowerGrid anymore in tracerts to Google. They seem to either be using a transparent proxy or maybe, started directly peering with Google now?
Click to expand...
You are right. From the 43 block IP traceroutes, you can see PowerGrid IP but not from 103 block IPs.

This is from 43 block i did few days ago
Code: 
$ sudo mtr -c 3 -r 8.8.8.8
Start: 2020-07-19T14:45:31+0530
HOST: ***                         Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- xiaoqiang                  0.0%     3    2.0   1.8   1.6   2.0   0.2
  2.|-- 100.65.128.1               0.0%     3    6.0   5.7   5.1   6.2   0.6
  3.|-- 192.168.20.1               0.0%     3   30.3  18.6   6.6  30.3  11.9
  4.|-- 103.70.60.1                0.0%     3   17.1  19.6  17.1  24.6   4.3. <= PowerGrid
  5.|-- 74.125.242.145             0.0%     3   18.0  18.2  18.0  18.3   0.1
  6.|-- 216.239.42.237             0.0%     3   23.9  19.4  17.0  23.9   3.9
  7.|-- dns.google                 0.0%     3   18.3  31.4  16.9  59.1  24.0

Check this traceroute from 103 block, you have to enable TCP pings in mtr to get the transparent PowerGrid IP.

Without TCP SYN ping, no PowerGrid
Code: 
$ sudo mtr -rw -c 3 8.8.8.8
Start: 2020-07-21T11:54:29+0530
HOST: ***.              Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- xiaoqiang        0.0%     3    3.2  12.3   3.2  18.4   8.0
  2.|-- 100.65.128.1     0.0%     3   13.3  11.2   7.8  13.3   2.9
  3.|-- 192.168.20.1     0.0%     3   21.5  29.8  21.5  37.2   7.9
  4.|-- 209.85.148.170   0.0%     3   48.8  31.9  21.1  48.8  14.8
  5.|-- 108.170.253.97   0.0%     3   24.0  24.1  22.5  25.7   1.6
  6.|-- 108.170.234.109 33.3%     3   22.7  23.6  22.7  24.5   1.2
  7.|-- dns.google       0.0%     3   21.1  26.4  20.9  37.2   9.4

With TCP SYN ping, you can see PowerGrid
Code: 
$ sudo mtr -rw -c 3 -T 8.8.8.8
Start: 2020-07-21T11:53:56+0530
HOST: ***               Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- xiaoqiang        0.0%     3    2.3   2.7   2.1   3.6   0.8
  2.|-- 100.65.128.1     0.0%     3    7.2   6.5   5.8   7.2   0.7
  3.|-- 192.168.20.1     0.0%     3   15.3   9.5   6.0  15.3   5.0
  4.|-- 103.199.160.30   0.0%     3    6.3   6.2   5.3   6.9   0.8
  5.|-- 103.199.160.29   0.0%     3    7.7  30.8   5.4  79.2  42.0
  6.|-- 103.70.60.1      0.0%     3  720.8 258.4  19.5 720.8 400.5 <= PowerGrid
  7.|-- 108.170.253.113  0.0%     3  640.0 227.0  20.0 640.0 357.6
  8.|-- 108.170.234.109  0.0%     3  641.1 240.0  24.4 641.1 347.7
  9.|-- ???             100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0


Sammy said:
Latency to Cloudflare is beyond messed up right now.
Click to expand...
Yes. Cloudflare traffic exits via Airtel. 182.73.157.189 seems to be Airtel-KV gateway.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Zuke
  • Featured
  • Article Article
My experience so far with Reliance JioFiber
6 7 8 9 10
Replies
143
Views
19,256
victim
L
Kerala Vision Broadband FTTH
2 3 4 5
Replies
61
Views
46,315
meh
varkey
  • Article Article
My x86 router journey
5 6 7 8 9
Replies
125
Views
21,766
srilakshmidaran
A
  • Article Article
Netplus FTTH : User Experience
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
81
Views
21,982
naresh sharma
Top