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How do you figure out good routing?
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How do you figure out good routing?

Hi folks,

when I read the thread about FDC Frankfurt I saw some comments about the routing. I know that having more direct peerings is rather good, but how do you check what upstreams a hoster has and if those are any good? Whats your workflow to check a data center network-wise? Maybe you can demonstrate your workflow with 82.221.28.150, which is Advania Datacenter in Iceland.

Post here what you find out about the quality of this datacenter network-wise and why it's good or bad, I would really like to learn more about this.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • dhamaniasaddhamaniasad Member
    edited November 2013

    For the upstreams, use bgp.he.net

    Like this: http://bgp.he.net/AS44515#_peers

    Just input the IP address into the search field, and then you'll get the ASN number and all relevant information.

    As for seeing the network quality, you might want to use something like this(http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php) to check the quality of the network from multiple locations. I don't know if this link would work, but have a look at this:

    http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php?vtt=1385320999&varghost=82.221.28.150&vhost=_&vaction=ping&ping=start

    Testing the IP from 30 locations. The quality of their network seems pretty good, though there is some packet loss from a few locations.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited November 2013

    The "dream" of Iceland being connected not just to Europe but also to the US, still has not been realized, eh? At least not with this provider, all I see on traceroutes from various places, everything is going via TATA in London to them. Hence it is not clear what are you going to achieve by hosting in Iceland rather than simply in London or generally somewhere in the EU. Other than closeness to your Iceland clients(?) and a different political jurisdiction. And in the latter case, still why bother, Iceland is not such a rosy freedom haven as people think... http://www.newsoficeland.com/home/business-economics/private-sector/item/1224-says-the-pirate-bay-website-in-iceland-is-highly-illegal

  • Some of it is common sense - like what carriers work best at certain locations etc.

    The best way is to run trace routes to your target audience and get some numbers.

    Unfortunately a lot of the test scripts that do pings aren't usually from eyeballs (customer ISPs), so it only tells you 1/2 the story.

  • @rm_ I don't want to host there. This was just an example, I could have taken ColoCrossing or Hetzner instead. It doesn't mean that I would like to host there. The peers view on HE.net makes sense. So if an AS has only one peering partner everything runs over this partner and I have to look further on his peers list to finally find some routes to the AS I am connecting to. Now I see why there are so many possible ways of routing..

  • It seem they have a bad routing to my country from EU - HK - IN - UK - MY. It show like EU then MY. =)

  • The most basic ping and traceroute tools will do this job if tested from/to multiple target locations of your interested audience.

  • rm_ said: The "dream" of Iceland being connected not just to Europe but also to the US, still has not been realized, eh

    The Emerald Express cable is apparently due to be lit up by Q3 2014 (Source PDF)

    Not sure if the Greenland Connect (CA - GL - IS) cable is being used by anyone apart from TelePost Greenland, but the latencies advertised seem alright; 33ms from Halifax to Iceland, 18ms from Iceland back to London - All traffic I've ever seen from Iceland goes straight through London before anywhere else :(

  • smansman Member
    edited November 2013

    I use cloudmonitor.ca.com a lot.

    For command line testing from your location you can use pathping on windows or mtr on Linux.

    I use pingplotter pro which is pathping on steroids. Nice easy GUI, can do multiple IP's simultaneously, good for long term monitoring as well.

    I've never had much use for peering reports myself. I find what providers say and is reported and what they actually do internally are not always the same. They all say multiple peering multiple redundancy blah blah but when things go pear shaped it never seems to be that way and that is usually the only way you find out.

    For example, they may have multiple peers but that never seems to prevent you having problems when their primary link is getting saturated from DDoS or if it goes down. Probably because most only do the bare minimum on their backup links.

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