I always wondered why pings times make such a jump between my border router and the next units from the ISP.

Before I used plain ADSL modems, first with nat, later routed (nat done in my box, all RB by the way, border router is rb1000) but always saw that jump from <30ms within my network (no matter from were in my network) towards >50 or even >100ms and on ADSL lines even into the + 200ms!

Now I have a new 10Mb symmetric line which gives me ping times to internet server <100ms but running traceroute still sees a jump in the first next one or two routers after leaving my network.

My rb1000 is connected with an full duplex Ethernet connection (100M) to a Cisco box that in returns connects to a radio device which make a licensed radio link to ISP's next tower.
I have a private /24 network assigned and the IP of the Cisco ends with .1 while my rb1000 has .2 and all other IP's of that network to the interface (So 254 addresses.)

I was actually wondering if this is normal behaviour or is there a way that my config is not good?
If there was any way I could reduce the ping times any further it would improve the network!

rgds

coul you please send a screenshot of the traceroute?

Many ISP use private IP in his network and when you try to trace this host show like reques time out.

84.232.92.1 is my public IP of the rb1000 and then 10.0.5.254 is obvious the first IP on the ISP's network.
In between this rb1000 is one more rb600 that is in bridge mode and has mangle filter running for QoS of the traffic. Hence the delay here of some 10-12ms?

The screen shots are made with a very nice graphic tool called "Pingplotter Standard"

The red vertical line shows the last ping times, the black horizontal lines the variation in ping times over the last 10 sample pings and the cross in that black vertical line is the average ping time in the last 10 samples.

The red horizontal bars actually shows two nodes were 100% package loss has occurred.

I also attached a screendump of a traceroute done from a router: All these dumps are made in the middle of the day. Although the jump in time delay is visible after leaving my network it is not as bad as during the night The average traffic flow to my network is usually a bit higher to my network then during the day (several torrent downloaders active.)
I have 10Mb assigned but hardly ever see more then 7Mb going to/coming from my ISP.

Looks like your ISP is just aggressively dropping ICMP.

Looks like your ISP is just aggressively dropping ICMP.

?? Meaning?

I see that their first router is not responding, but it can be icmp is just blocked? But the rest of the delays is that because of their blocking?
A bit more clarification please.

R.

Most ISPs will do QoS, and will either drop ICMP or at least service it last. That doesn't mean that TCP, UDP and other protocols don't go through very quick - but their routers will respond to a ping/traceroute last, or not respond at all.

Do you have actual throughput issues with production traffic?

Well, I run a ping test from pingtest.net and get usually a line quality "C", often "B" but just now even a "D" grade!
Quality MOS (http://www.pingtest.net/help.php#q4) fluctuates between 4 and 4.80

I am looking in ways to improve things. I just want to make a network that is better then the competition, if possible.

Most ISPs will do QoS

All ISPs that stay in business do QoS in one way or another. They gotta.

All that really means is that they *will* in either a nice sophisticated way, or in a nasty brutal way (depending on their skill/resources) Drop Your Packets.

Never assume that the guy who bought Cisco actually knows what they are doing.

The best means for getting anywhere is to find somewhere *inside* your ISP's own network that is distant from you and monitor it with something like Dude or Nagios. Even a 'ping -t' from a windows box will do, so long as you record the results.
Do the same with something *outside* their network, e.g. bbc.

Then when they tell you (again) that it's You (not Them) you will have some kind of hard evidence.

At the very least you will gain data that might show you a pattern, and allow you to deduce what is going on.

Interesting, how to find someone that is using the same provider as I do? My provider only serves line starting with 400 euros per month so probably only business users or other providers use their services.
These are usually not the ones that like to tell other (possible competitors) providers what their source is.
And the provider is not willing to tell me who their clients are.....

But thanks for the info..

You should know your assigned IP address ......

Try accessing the other IPs on your subnet in a browser.

If you get lucky, another punter will be running a web server.

Sometimes web pages have contact details ....

oh. you can also google the IPs too and see what turns up.

ooops. i forgot.

You might want to look at RIPE/APNIC/JPNIC et al to see if your provider is actually your provider.

You should know your assigned IP address ......

Try accessing the other IPs on your subnet in a browser.

If you get lucky, another punter will be running a web server.

Sometimes web pages have contact details ....

??
I know my assigned IP, I know my assigned network too (/24) so I don't understand what you want to tell me here?

If you look up your assigned network on RIPE et al, you will find out who owns that range, or at least a superset of your range, or an adjacent set of IP addresses.

If you get lucky, then it will show you the name of the owner, and what their full range is.

You can then Google or just probe some addresses in that range and find out who another customer is - same provider as you got.