West Texas Area -Gamer [ Edited ]

[fabricatedhero]

Just wanted to share the issue and un-satisfied routing ATT uses. First off I will say as an ISP provider for browesing, Netflix, Hulu, and etc they are pretty good in my city. Not so much for gamers. I am on the MaxPlus U-verse HIgh speed Internet plan.

The issue/problem I would like people that are gamers to take notice is how their internet traffic is being routed. As the title suggest i am located in West Texas or El Paso Texas to be specific. I noticed about a month ago my latency to my games server, located in Dallas was giving me a latency spike in numbers. I discovered after pinging a few servers through pingtest.net that I was getting the lowest latency from Los Angeles. To find out my internet traffic has been routed to California by an infostructure change in ATT. After numerous phone calls to ATT and speaking with two different T2's. This was the case and happens after the 8th hop on a tracer route. The dilemma is a month ago i was being routed to Dallas directly and was getting the same latency/ping I am getting now in LA.

The internet is working why complain?

To answer that question is not easy but as a gamer you should be aware of what latency/ping is at some point. This causes what gamers call lag due to high latency/ping. Now you have to understand my games server is located in Dallas and only in Dallas. Why is it that way i do not know. To answer, yes this is a well known game.

Due to ATT's new routing/trafficing of my cities internet to LA my path changed from

El Paso--->Dallas (game server)

to

El Paso--->Los Angeles--->Dallas (game server)

This routing causes more hops and more latency due to this issue. Bottom line I have recieved from ATT is that there is nothing they can do to change the route to anyones internet traffic. So if you are a gamer and you're provider is ATT you should look into where your're internet traffic is being routed because that is likely the cause of your latency issue. I recieved no help other than an explanation and that basically if my internet is working to view youtube, Hulu, and Netlfix then ATT is not concerned with gamers and how they reach the servers destination. It is sad to see such a large company give no concern to the gaming community and their specific needs.

Also, incase you are a gamer and wondering I already tried a proxy service but my internet still routes to LA then back to Dallas so no change there either. Looks like i'm on a hunt for a better infastructured ISP.

[bauwls]

Good job finding that information and getting a rep willing to work with you over the phone. Yes, latency in VDSL2 and ADSL2+ U-verse infastructure is one of the known disadvantages to the internet portion of their service. I am right there with you along with huge amount of dropped packets once 2Wire RG has saturating of the upload/download.

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

I can't believe that you found a T2 who actually knows how traffic is routed out of West Texas.  Or anywhere else.

Why don't you post a few traceroutes showing your routing issue.

[fabricatedhero]

Heres the trace routes you asked for. As far as i can see i know how data is pointed to depending on the place your trying to see. I am not sure if the last representative told me what i described in my OP and I cannot duplicate whatever the T2 did of ping testing from my box.

Tracing route to www.google.com [74.125.227.48]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    30 ms    20 ms    20 ms  99-118-68-2.lightspeed.elpstx.sbcglobal.net [99.
118.68.2]
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4    21 ms    20 ms    20 ms  99.161.7.23
  5    20 ms    20 ms    20 ms  12.83.76.133
  6    93 ms    74 ms    73 ms  12.123.132.173
  7    39 ms    38 ms    38 ms  12.91.217.158
  8    39 ms    39 ms    39 ms  209.85.248.185
  9    39 ms    39 ms    40 ms  64.233.174.192
 10    60 ms    60 ms    60 ms  64.233.174.141
 11    60 ms    60 ms   115 ms  72.14.237.218
 12    61 ms    60 ms    60 ms  209.85.250.77
 13    60 ms    62 ms    59 ms  dfw06s06-in-f16.1e100.net [74.125.227.48]

Trace complete.

Tracing route to youtube-ui.l.google.com [74.125.224.168]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  homeportal [192.168.1.254]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5    20 ms    20 ms    20 ms  12.83.76.133
  6    38 ms    54 ms    38 ms  12.123.132.173
  7    41 ms    39 ms   105 ms  12.91.217.158
  8    39 ms    39 ms    39 ms  209.85.248.185
  9    40 ms    39 ms    39 ms  72.14.236.11
 10    39 ms    39 ms    38 ms  lax02s01-in-f8.1e100.net [74.125.224.168]

Trace complete.

One straight from the box

www.hulu.com

traceroute 69.31.112.120 with 64 packetsize

1: 99-118-68-2.lightspeed.elpstx.sbcglobal.net (99.118.68.2) 27 ms
2: * *
3: 99.161.7.23 21 ms
4: 12.83.76.133 20 ms
5: 12.123.132.130 39 ms
6: 0.xe-4-3-0.BR3.LAX15.ALTER.NET (204.255.168.133) 40 ms
7: 0.ae3.XL4.LAX15.ALTER.NET (152.63.113.190) 39 ms
8: TenGigE0-5-1-0.GW4.LAX15.ALTER.NET (152.63.115.182) 41 ms
9: nlayer.customer.alter.net (152.179.21.14) 43 ms
10: 69.31.112.120 43 ms

The original question I had was asking how come my latency changed to this

When it used to be the opposite. That was all I was asking in the beginning.

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

I agree that it does appear that your primary routing does seem to go through LA.  As routing is dynamic at some levels, this may be a temporary or permanent adjustment.  For destinations that have content servers in both places, it shouldn't be that much of an issue, e.g. see how YouTube is serving from LA, while the www.google.com came back to Dallas, which is sort of odd.

If you're just trying to get to something in the Dallas area, yeah, that would mean about 30 extra ms of latency to go around your elbow to get to your thumb.

[fabricatedhero]

I understand that in actuallity an extra 30ms that your giving me as a number is really not a big number but added and compounded to other variables such as a bad line or server. The numbers could turn into 40+30+20+20...until it reaches its destination and now i'm sitting at 110ms just to get to a server in NY for example. Right now with my games network tool my ping from them is showing a range of 160-250ms and their server is located in the same state as me.

As you can imagine when it comes to gaming this is not exceptable as a smooth gaming experience, but as Big Blue said to me that alongs their tools are showing under 200ms from my box to them then they have met their customer service agreement and mandate of a satisfied level as far as they are concerned. So even if you fall under 190ms, in reality, you are actually gonna have a even higher latency due to other variables that ATT has no control over. So end the end you are paying $50+ dollars to a compnay that is not upgrading their infostructure or making it better. Instead their business practice as of now seems to be the methodology of "lets use band-aids" solution by putting in a new switch.

I am saying this because my city is not even close to a million and ATT's solution to population growth is send every second ATT customer in the area to LA and the rest to Dallas. So what happens in a few years when our population continues to grow? They are gonna send every third person to Denver?

So in the end my money is being used on a Band-Aid solution and because of their solution I am forced to have a bad connection? If you are like me and have issues like this that are proven by actual Data I implore you to contact ATT and demand atleast a $10+ discount each month for this issue that they deem is not fixable. We all should not pay full price for a product that is not working correctly. If they are not going to recognize gaming, routing, latency issues on their network then that means their finished product is incomplete and are giving us an un-satisfied customer service experience when it comes to their product. Even at their designated 200ms or less as a sustainable goal is just mind boggling. What are we in the year 1995?

Lastly latency does not only affect games but they affect the entire user experience in a whole. It is just with gaming it is more noticeable. I would take slower download speeds with a very low 20ms latency through out all major corridors any day.

*note* I do want to thank you JefferMC for being there and helping me out BTW ^_^