The gfl mge server is in Dallas, not chicago for what its worth

My apologies ill edit ty for letting me know :)

lol I see comcast

[img]https://i.imgur.com/UWwFwjI.jpg[/img]

This bullshit started in early November for me. Almost any connection I make the signal goes to Denver first and then to anywhere else.

I wrote this big fat nerd essay and then realized no one asked you the shit that like... matters.
Are you on Wifi? Is there congestion on your network? Is your router/modem any good?

The tracert doesn't show an issue with routing, it shows an issue with something on the second hop.
What tracert does is it sends 3 packets that are told to error out and respond after a certain number of router hops have been made. These are 3 tiny packets that should have at MOST like 5ms variance on the first 5-6 hops.
The columns for tracert are as follows (RTT=Round Trip Time aka the amount of time it took the packet to go from your PC, to the router, back to your PC.):
#ofHops RTTof1stPacket RTTof2ndPacket RTTof3rdPacket IP or hostname

What you're seeing is that immediately once the packets have to interact with anything beyond your default gateway, they spike randomly and can't form a coherent pattern. My first instinct is that your modem sucks, but don't spend money because I said that.


[spoiler](My last networking class was in college 2 years ago so this might be shaky) Routing is really just algorithms that are run incredibly quickly when you send packets to a remote location. Generally (once again it's been a while) what is prioritized when deciding where to send a packet is the reliability of the connections between point A (you) and point B (nerd server). That does NOT mean it says "well this one is less latency so go there." That's because 99% of internet consumption does not give a shit if something is 140 milliseconds later than instantaneous, but would notice if suddenly a series of packets were dropped in a row (and honestly so would you. I think you'd rather have 100 ping than 20% packet loss.)

You don't even really care about WHERE your packets are going. The issue is the number of stops your packet needs to make along the way. Most of the connections you're taking are fiber lines so your packet is literally traveling at the speed of light, but then it gets to a router and slow poopy computer take 2ms to process and send the signal. Do this enough and you get high ping.

Your ISP won't help you, mostly because they really don't give a shit about your tf2 server ping, but also because the calculation of where to send packets is only run once and given a lease where it won't check again until a certain time has passed (in my experience a week but idk). In theory you might be able to change the MAC address of your router/modem and force the first hop router to run a new calculation of routes but it will likely lead to the same outcome.

What can you do? Uhhh hope US legislature catches up to the needs of the people not the needs of the ISPs. But we got rid of net neutrality so that seems unlikely. As for a solution today you could TRY using a VPN to get alternate route, one that takes less hops, that's what all those "gaming" vpns claim to do. But YMMV and most gaming VPNs are pretty much money grabs.[/spoiler]

[quote=Pete]I wrote this big fat nerd essay and then realized no one asked you the shit that like... matters.
Are you on Wifi? Is there congestion on your network? Is your router/modem any good?

The tracert doesn't show an issue with routing, it shows an issue with something on the second hop.
What tracert does is it sends 3 packets that are told to error out and respond after a certain number of router hops have been made. These are 3 tiny packets that should have at MOST like 5ms variance on the first 5-6 hops.
The columns for tracert are as follows (RTT=Round Trip Time aka the amount of time it took the packet to go from your PC, to the router, back to your PC.):
#ofHops RTTof1stPacket RTTof2ndPacket RTTof3rdPacket IP or hostname

What you're seeing is that immediately once the packets have to interact with anything beyond your default gateway, they spike randomly and can't form a coherent pattern. My first instinct is that your modem sucks, but don't spend money because I said that.


[spoiler](My last networking class was in college 2 years ago so this might be shaky) Routing is really just algorithms that are run incredibly quickly when you send packets to a remote location. Generally (once again it's been a while) what is prioritized when deciding where to send a packet is the reliability of the connections between point A (you) and point B (nerd server). That does NOT mean it says "well this one is less latency so go there." That's because 99% of internet consumption does not give a shit if something is 140 milliseconds later than instantaneous, but would notice if suddenly a series of packets were dropped in a row (and honestly so would you. I think you'd rather have 100 ping than 20% packet loss.)

You don't even really care about WHERE your packets are going. The issue is the number of stops your packet needs to make along the way. Most of the connections you're taking are fiber lines so your packet is literally traveling at the speed of light, but then it gets to a router and slow poopy computer take 2ms to process and send the signal. Do this enough and you get high ping.

Your ISP won't help you, mostly because they really don't give a shit about your tf2 server ping, but also because the calculation of where to send packets is only run once and given a lease where it won't check again until a certain time has passed (in my experience a week but idk). In theory you might be able to change the MAC address of your router/modem and force the first hop router to run a new calculation of routes but it will likely lead to the same outcome.

What can you do? Uhhh hope US legislature catches up to the needs of the people not the needs of the ISPs. But we got rid of net neutrality so that seems unlikely. As for a solution today you could TRY using a VPN to get alternate route, one that takes less hops, that's what all those "gaming" vpns claim to do. But YMMV and most gaming VPNs are pretty much money grabs.[/spoiler][/quote]

I appreciate your help. I've tried a VPN but from what I'm understanding there really is no solution or proper fix to this that I have the power to do on my own I can only hope it resolves itself?

[quote=Pete]great explanation[/quote]
This was a very good explanation, thank you!

It's a bit late but I have to correct Pete's explanation:
Routing is not to blame here, Comcast is.

There is a fairly direct, nice and fast fiber connection Seattle-Denver-Dallas. I think Level 3 (now owned by CenturyLink) owns that. And that is the problem. You see, usually an ISP would send any traffic that goes outside their local network to an interregional/international carrier with all those nice, fast fiber routes and they'd pay them for it so they can maintain and expand that network and everyone is happy. Except Comcast doesn't want to do that. Comcast wants the tier 1 carriers to pay them for the privilege of getting access to Comcast customers. It makes no sense, wouldn't be a sustainable business and is generally going nowhere. So while Comcast can bully local ISPs into those deals and sometimes even companies that depend on their traffic getting to Comcast customers with decent bandwidth (like Netflix) the tier 1 carriers won't ever agree to a deal that will only ever cost them money. The reason why Comcast can get away with that is that they've got local networks everywhere and simply connected them to pretend that they can do everything a tier 1 carrier can do. The quality of that substitution is what you can see.

Basically this:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/how-comcast-became-a-powerful-and-controversial-part-of-the-internet-backbone/
Has been going on for years.

tl;dr
Good connection exists, Comcast wants to get paid for using it instead of paying.

stl;sdr
Comcast bad.