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Virgin Media Peering with OVH

alasdairc
On our wavelength

Hi all,

I hope you are all well

I am having a few issues with what I can only assume is networking peering to OVH. I am a Linux Engineer by trade and also run my own dedicated GAME-2 servers using Proxmox with OVH for various personal purposes, including game servers. I have no issue with Virgin Media overall, but I seem to experience a higher average ping/latency response than most, even more than users who are a further distance away from the data center in Erith, London. These users are on Sky or BT, which uses the Openreach network as you will probably know.

I know it's nothing excessive, and don't want to come across as being awkward but response times to my servers are between 18-24ms, whereas other users of my game services, at a further distance away can be as low as 8ms and <1 ms for those in and around London.

My own set up, here at home, originally was the M500 package with my networking set up as both the Hub 3 in Router mode and also in Modem-only mode with a TP-Link ER605 doing routing. I am now on Gig1, also in modem-only mode, with the TP-Link router. All devices, except mobile phones are on Cat6 ethernet and the "higher" latency is seen across all ethernet devices. 

It's worth noting, I am not having any problems with speed, just latency to services on different peered networks. OVH to OVH services globally (I run Smokeping latency monitoring and also Zabbix ICMP latency monitoring from Canada, Singapore and Australia to the game servers) are absolutely fine so the problem seems to be between Virgin Media to OVH itself

 

Simple ping from my home to one of the public Failover IP's (also the same results for the physical host itself):

Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=49

 

Any assistance on this, or any additional information you would like, please let me know

Thanks! 

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Thats Docsis for you.
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See where this Helpful Answer was posted

17 REPLIES 17

alasdairc
On our wavelength
It does actually look like Virgin and OVH peer directly with LINX LON1... maybe a routing issue? Eg, unoptimised routing?

alasdairc
On our wavelength
Just confirmed with a work colleague from another part of the UK, also appearing to have a high latency response time to my server. Also tested from a VPS on another ISP and getting 4ms response times.

Seems to be Virgin Media routing.

Good Morning @alasdairc, I understand that since your posts you've been able to speak to our call centre.

Can you please tell me what was advised and how the services is currently looking?

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

Hi there,

I have spoken to Virgin Media about another issue, yes, however when trying to explain this issue the helpdesk were not very 'helpful' unfortunately and didn't understand what I was talking about when I spoke about peering or routing

I have had an engineer come yesterday as they saw my downstream power transmission was more than double what it should be, that has been fixed, however still having higher than should be latency to non-Virgin Media services eg. online games, my OVH game servers etc

Virgin Media are great for bandwidth, however when it comes to latency it doesn't appear they are as good as Openreach ISP's in that regard. As mentioned, users on my game servers and other online games that are further away from the game server itself are having lower/better latency than me/ For example, a user on my Rust server last night had better latency than me from Germany!


Thanks

Kain_W
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi alasdairc,

Thanks for your response and welcome back to the community page

From looking into your account I can see your currently affected by an area fault which may hinder your immediate connectivity for which I apologise for.

With regards to your issue I can’t see any glaring problems in the settings that would attribute to it.

Can I ask has this problem happened in the past?

Kain

alasdairc
On our wavelength

Hi there,

 

Yes its a problem that has existed ever since I've been with VM and also affects a work colleague who is on VM. Testing from other ISP's does not result in high latency.

 

 

Alasdair

Zak_M
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Good afternoon @alasairc, 

 

Thank you for coming back to us.

 

I have taken a further look into your account today & everything is within spec. 

 

Are you still having issues? 

 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

legacy1
Alessandro Volta

@alasdairc wrote:

Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=49
Reply from PUBLICIP: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=49

you will not get a lower ping with VM

---------------------------------------------------------------

alasdairc
On our wavelength

Hi @Zak_M

Yes, still having issues:

Pinging XXXXXXX [XXXXXXX] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=61
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=61
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=61

This is bad latency considering myself and my server are within the same country. Users from Germany to the IP I'm pinging get significantly lower latency. Users on other ISP's at a further away distance IN the UK, have significantly lower latency.

This is an example of latency from someone elses ISP further away to the target than I am:

Pinging XXXXXXX [XXXXXXX] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=48
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=48
Reply from XXXXXXX: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=48

^^ This is what it should be, not 20-30ms. 

This is over the Openreach network.

As mentioned a number of times now, this isn't a problem with my hardware, setup, or line... this is a problem with Virgin Media routing. I've had an engineer come out and fix a downstream power issue, that's resolved and the latency existed way before I upgraded to Gig1. Again, it's the same with a work colleague who is also on VM.

For example:

You want to go and travel somewhere and you use Google Maps. Google Maps will take you the shortest/quickest way - however, in VM's case, this doesn't seem to be the case. The routing across the UK-wide Virgin Media network does not seem optimised. It's either taking a longer route or it's just unoptimised.

I can't put this down to peering with OVH as far as I can tell, as OVH and Virgin Media both peer directly with LON LINX, so it must be UK-wide internal routing with Virgin Media.

This has been tested on my network, and has been tested with a work colleague in another part of the UK, who is also on Virgin Media. This is also NOT EXCLUSIVE to OVH - this includes ALL online games I play, for example League of Legends I get between 20-40ms latency.


As mentioned, it's not my setup, it's not my hardware or the line itself - it's Virgin Media's network routing around the UK - from what I can see.


Thanks