High ping to ACT WAN gateway

[bbkk]

Hi , @Smallship

Let me explain this , though its a long post please try to read with patience and also i worked with Major ISP. & closely worked with top broadband providers with India and had a decent understanding on the infra , technologies deployed by the ISP's in their core backbone

Problem : Your concern of High latency to Gateway of ACT

Generally Broadband Providers has a concept of PPPOE SERVER , which is technically called as BNG / BRAS this is where a virtual connection will be established from your home router to this server

BNG are very costly in nature , appx 1CR and above so ISP primarily choose to install these server only in Tier 1 / 2 Cities and get the Tier 3 Cities connected with Tier 1 / 2

so to explain this easier , your connection Gateway is in Chennai

Latency Issue : Latency is basically the distance between two hops which you were aware clearly by now

Why its jumping is the question ? Madurai to Chennai you will be having 3 Paths [ Path 1 , Path 2 , Path 3 ] , in this the telco primarily have lesser latency on the direct path , in case of outages on direct Path fiber cut , degradation the circuit travels on longer distance path which increases the latency

Impact of service ; Yes in todays point of view if you are playing a sort of High reliable gaming or something then 30ms may cause disturbance but when it comes to a normal browsing or watching netflix the Quality of service still remains as normal , as <70ms will be too good for a normal browsing ,

Now have a clean discussion with your Provider technical team & i hope for your sake the architecture of broadband cant be changed as it involves high opex cost

hope i have given you a clear explanation

 

[Smallship]

Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed assessment.

A representative from customer care had told me about how their current infrastructure is, including the three paths and how they might switch routes between them to improve overall quality.

I do agree there's nothing noticeable with normal browsing or streaming. But when it comes to competitive games, even a difference 20ms can make a huge impact. Especially when ACT advertises lowest latency for gaming but they don't serve right for the purpose.

My city is a tier 2 city. Other major ISPs like Airtel and Jio have a BNG server here. I understand each ISP infrastructure is different. But from an end point consumer point of view, the experience with high pings is just disappointing. Plus a lot of people I know use ACT around me. A few of them play competitive games as well and get similarly higher pings.

The pings are a little better now. But still nowhere near low or atleast normal like 15ms. Hopefully since the userbase is growing they might add a server here. I'll have no option but to switch to alternative providers if the situation doesn't improve.

 

[Smallship]

So the issue was fixed back in February. Got 8ms to BNG server which was really great and everything went fine until a month back when it started happening again.
Default pings are above 28ms now, and I'm super frustrated right now because I just subscribed to a long term plan.
My suggestion if anyone is looking for a connection in a tier 2 city - If you are from Madurai or any tier 2 city, just look away. Customer service is non existent.

 

[Smallship]

Update on the ping/routing issue in Madurai

It's getting worse everyday. My ping to gateway is over 35ms these days. (Used to be 8-9ms after the fix in February until somewhere mid last month) and adds the extra latency to every other server after it.

Screenshot-20220818-201528-Pixel-Launcher hosted at ImgBB

Image Screenshot-20220818-201528-Pixel-Launcher hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Madurai to Chennai is like 500kms so the shortest path should take 8ms (Someone I know got Railwire, and it gets 7ms in fast.com Chennai server because Railwire got a local gateway. They live just 2km away from me.)

I'm disappointed because it is partly my mistake too, renewing for long term knowing their routing is unreliable. But I renewed since I was getting under 10ms at that time. But since last month I'm getting over 30 mostly.

The funny thing is even my Jio/Airtel mobile data gives under 25ms to Chennai servers.

 

[Smallship]

So for an update - the latency to gateway is still bad more than half of the time, and everyday. Over 30ms to the gateway which is only 500km away( about 10ms away with good routing). Here's an interesting thing though- checked with one of my friends in Chennai who uses ACT to ping a Madurai server from there, and they get only 7ms. While I get 30ms to Chennai (gateway), and I've never got such low pings before either. This is weird because if they could get 7, why couldn't I get atleast 10 from here to their gateway in Chennai? I think they don't use the shortest route at all for Madurai.
This seems to be a local issue only in my city.

 

[cruiz]

Any update ?are you still facing the problem?

 

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