Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
bsweeney
Enthusiast - Level 2

I'm trying to resolve an issue where the VPN connection my wife uses for work is unreasonably slow. Running a speed test without VPN we get > 70mbps, but running the same speed test over the VPN and we get around 5mbps. We live in Vienna, VA and the VPN endpoint is in Washington, DC.

There's no obvious issue with the laptop itself or the VPN connection, and internet usage without the VPN is fine. Without any other ideas I figured I'd do a traceroute to see if there was maybe an issue with the routing. Based on what comes back from running a traceroute it looks like maybe, possibly, the VPN connection is being routed through Europe.

Here's a summary of the traceroute:

  1. fios_quantum_gateway

  2. lo0-100.washdc-vfttp-311.verizon-gni.net (173.79.139.1)
  3. b3311.washdc-lcr-21.verizon-gni.net (130.81.219.152)
  4. * * *
  5. 0.ae7.gw11.iad8.alter.net (140.222.234.11)
  6. vodafone-gw.customer.alter.net (204.148.79.74)
  7. ae8-xcr2.nyk.cw.net (195.2.30.189)
  8. akamai-us-gw.nyk.cw.net (195.89.106.110)
  9. po110.**bleep**-b.sech-lga.netarch.akamai.com (23.57.97.245)
  10. ae121.access-a.sech-lga.netarch.akamai.com (23.57.97.251)
  11. 93.191.173.130 (93.191.173.130)
  12. a72-52-27-208.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com
  13. (* * * all the way down)

It's that 93.191.173.130 address in particular that's got me wondering. All the IP locator services place that in Europe. I know that large operators can serve the same IP from multiple geo-localities, and a lot of the ones returned by traceroute do vary in location depending on the service used, but 93.191.173.130 seems to be squarely in Europe.

If I'm correct in my assessment it seems to me that Verizon, being one of the main network operators in the US, would be interested to know that the traffic is being misrouted so horribly leading to unneccessary network congestion (?) and degraded performance. I would also imagine we're not the only customer experiencing the issue, and someone less technical would probably be more inclined to blame Verizon. My wife certainly does, and is ready to move to another provider.

I'm hoping maybe someone on the network operations team at Verizon, or someone who knows someone, might see this and politely send a query to their peers inquiring about the routing issue.

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Re: Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

ISPs don't monitor routing to know if particular traffic is misrouted.

And it may not be. It may depend on what services her company is using.

Our their ISP. I see one of the first isps is Vodafone which is a European provider.

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Re: Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
bsweeney
Enthusiast - Level 2

@CRobGauth wrote:

ISPs don't monitor routing to know if particular traffic is misrouted.

I do realize that, but I think it's fair to say that if a network operator is notified of poor routing there is at least the possibility that they may take action on it. I must say I was pretty disappointed in the response I got from Verizon. I realize there may not be much they can do as an ISP but I was pretty much told to pound sand and enjoy my lovely internet access. It would be nice if an ISP that's also a major netop would spend a little bit of time trying to make the underlying infrastructure better. It's not like we're talking about Joe's Chicken Shack and Internet Access Co.

Our their ISP. I see one of the first isps is Vodafone which is a European provider.


Which is probably more indicative of the peering arrangements Verizon has than of the provider of service for the other end of the connection. 

It may depend on what services her company is using.

In this particular case the employer I'm talking about is the US government and I seriously doubt they would approve of their ISP sending sensitive information outside the country.

In the end we may just switch back to Cox, whose connection proved much more reliable. Which is a shame because I have enjoyed Verizon's service more in general. While we consider things (and try to get an alternate VPN gateway configuration) I'm hoping somebody at Verizon will maybe throw us a bone.

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Re: Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

ISPs can only handle routing as it is given to them. If the serving ISP tells the Internet to route to a site via Timbuktu, that's what happens.

Why should an ISP work to correct routing (if it even is correctable. Outages along the path can alter routing) for a site they don't own?

Have you tried talking to you wife's IT departmnet? Maybe they can work with their ISP to investigate.

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Re: Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
bsweeney
Enthusiast - Level 2

@CRobGauth wrote:

ISPs can only handle routing as it is given to them. If the serving ISP tells the Internet to route to a site via Timbuktu, that's what happens.

Why should an ISP work to correct routing (if it even is correctable. Outages along the path can alter routing) for a site they don't own?

Have you tried talking to you wife's IT departmnet? Maybe they can work with their ISP to investigate.


It's not even necessarily the serving ISP. It's the routers through which the data packets pass (BGP and all that). One misconfigured router can suddenly cause all traffic to route inefficiently (at best). This isn't a random one-off due to some outage somewhere, it's an obviously misconfigured system as it has been going on for months. Verizon may not have any control nor input into that routing, but that doesn't mean they're not capable of seeing something like that and politely knocking on their neighbors door and saying "**bleep** man?"

Not that I expect any of that to happen. I don't. Large companies like Verizon and Akamai have bigger fish to fry. I'm just a poor boy looking for a handout (in case any netop happens to catch wind of any of this). No harm in tossing the info out there to see what happens. Like, maybe a fios tech occasionally reads the forum and takes particular pride in his ability to make the internet a better place ... or something like that.

But to your point, I have passed the information along to my wife to pass along to her IT dept. They're already aware of my wife's poor connection speed to the VPN gateway (they mention it every time she calls in). What happens now is not under my control (much like Verizon passing a packet of data outside their network). What is under my control, however, is moving to a different provider whose service works. And though I'd like to stick with Verizon I won't be doing so if somebody can't help resolve the issue.

Re: Routing problems from Vienna VA to Washington DC
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that another ISP either isn't currently having (I think you said you tested?) or might have a similar issue.

Unless that ISP has direct connections to your end site, routing can change at any time.

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