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Routing Issues

Hello,

I live in northern VA. I connect to services via TCP to two servers: one in Ashburn, VA (literally a 5 minute drive to the server), and one in DC (abou ta 30 minute drive to the server). About 30% of the time, Verizon FiOS decides to route me to California in order to resolve one or both of the servers. This creates extremely high latency (80-120ms) and makes services unusable. Releasing/renewing DHCP on my home router does not help.

As an example, I took a Windows tracert to the server in DC that I'm currently pinging 81ms to. Here is the output (I highlighted the evidence that I'm going all the way to CA):

Tracing route to 50.97.59.34-static.reverse.softlayer.com [50.97.59.34]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms L100.WASHDC-VFTTP-153.verizon-gni.net [108.28.24
.1]
3 26 ms 10 ms 11 ms G0-3-4-1.WASHDC-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [130.81.1
05.178]
4 16 ms 15 ms 24 ms so-12-1-0-0.RES-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.
51.230]
6 99 ms 72 ms 71 ms 0.ae4.XL3.SJC7.ALTER.NET [140.222.226.203]
7 68 ms 73 ms 74 ms TenGigE0-6-1-0.GW3.SJC7.ALTER.NET [152.63.50.26]

8 88 ms 75 ms 87 ms be-209-pe03.11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [23
.30.206.93]
9 70 ms 70 ms 71 ms 75.149.228.214
10 74 ms 75 ms 73 ms ae0.bbr02.cs01.den01.networklayer.com [173.192.1
8.149]
11 79 ms 76 ms 75 ms ae0.bbr02.eq01.chi01.networklayer.com [173.192.1
8.130]
12 74 ms 74 ms 73 ms ae0.bbr02.eq01.wdc02.networklayer.com [173.192.1
8.154]
13 75 ms 74 ms 74 ms ae1.dar01.sr01.wdc01.networklayer.com [173.192.1
8.193]
14 75 ms 73 ms 74 ms po1.fcr03.sr02.wdc01.networklayer.com [208.43.11
8.157]
15 75 ms 74 ms 73 ms 50.97.59.34-static.reverse.softlayer.com [50.97.
59.34]

Trace complete.

How do I get this fixed? Can Verizon create static routes for me, since I use these services all the time? I never got these routing issues when I was with Comcast. It only started happening when I switched to Verizon FiOS. Latency of this magnitude--due to poor routing decisions by Verizon's routers--is unacceptable and makes no sense.

Thanks,

Justin

Comments

eljefe2

Yours is a fairly common problem reported here on the forum. There hasn't been an official solution offered by Verizon, but what you might try is selecting a different DNS server to see if that improves your routing any.

You can use a free utility, DNSBench, to identify the best performing server(s) at your location:

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

Some users have reported good luck using Google's DNS...8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4

Good luck.

jpstone1022

Hi eljefe,

Unless I'm missing something, DNS is irrelevant to this issue since I'm connecting directly to an IP address.

The issue is with Verizon's routers. Either a) they've configured their routing protocols poorly or b) they're doing some kind of load balancing that sends my packets off to another router dedicated to routing traffic as far away as possible before getting to its destination. 😄

All it would take to fix this is for Verizon to dedicate some resources to get their routing in order. It appears Comcast has done this, as I never experienced it with them.

In all seriousness, if this continues, I will cut my Verizon service and go back to Comcast. Routing me to CA to get to a server 5 miles away is unacceptable in any context. It's just extremely poor design.

eljefe2

What you say makes sense, jpstone. I was thinking of connecting to a domain name. However, I just ran a couple of experiements tracing the route to a specific IP address with different DNS servers in place. I got a different routing with the different DNS servers.

That may just be a conincidence but it might be worth your giving it a try.

As for giving up on Verizon and going back to Comcast, I can't blame you if you get better service from the cable provider. Here, for whatever reasons, my experience with FiOS has been much better than it was prviously with our local cable company.

Good luck. I hope you find a solution.

jpstone1022

I tried different DNS servers just for giggles. Same issue.

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