Isp's Routing me out of London to Shefield, and they cant do nothing about it!!

[Solz]

only did reset it one time!! and noticed that, and I dont think I know there is a issues when its routing me to Sheffield and back!! thats not normal until recent years for certain ISPs to do this! not a lot of happy people regarding this practice, most dont care and some dont have a clue which is fine!

 

[Screeeech]

I did a load of work for Plusnet's BNG edge routing design, when I worked for Juniper about 8 years ago, from memory - I don't even remember them having any routers in Sheffield (other than an office), most (I think almost all) of their broadband termination was done in London, as it followed BT's design at the time. (from what I can remember)

If I'm a betting man - I doubt it's being routed through Sheffield at all, it sounds potentially like a DNS problem - something in the traceroute is resolving to a wrong name somewhere.

We'll know when we see the traceroute!

 

[Rroff]

OP has same thread on other forums, interestingly the same kind of responses split between people who've never experienced this issue calling OP a joke LOL and those who've encountered it before. It really is a difficult one to comprehend, and OP isn't making it any easier, for people who've not experienced it.

 

[Rroff]

I did a load of work for Plusnet's BNG edge routing design, when I worked for Juniper about 8 years ago, from memory - I don't even remember them having any routers in Sheffield (other than an office), most (I think almost all) of their broadband termination was done in London, as it followed BT's design at the time. (from what I can remember)

If I'm a betting man - I doubt it's being routed through Sheffield at all, it sounds potentially like a DNS problem - something in the traceroute is resolving to a wrong name somewhere.

We'll know when we see the traceroute!

I dunno how it works with Plusnet, but people on Plusnet have had the issue before, but the problem is with BT and being routed via an inappropriate BRAS/BNG for their location and Sheffield is a common one for people in the south for some reason. The OP isn't making things any easier but this is a real long standing problem experienced by dozens of people over the last nearly 20 years :s

 

[Solz]

don't be a betting man be a knowing man 8 years is a long time and things change,
here is a copy of the hop
136.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk [195.166.143.136]

 

[Rroff]

In fact here is even a post from ChrisD a few years back heh:

Wasn't aware of the Sheffield thing being fixed, should have been done ages age, it was 2011 or 2012 when I was with them!

 

[Screeeech]

don't be a betting man be a knowing man 8 years is a long time and things change,
here is a copy of the hop
136.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk [195.166.143.136]

Can you like, post the entire trace?

 

[Rroff]

Post 15 here has a bit of surrounding info (thread by OP) - though I think this poster is actually wrong:

ISP's Routing me out of London to Sheffield, and they cant do nothing about it!!

So I was with Vodafone (fttc no fttp available yet) and they were routing me to Manchester, for ages I complained up to my end of contract, and they said they can do anything about it, then when I said, then then when I told them I ll leave as they they are no good for my needs they changed to...

www.ispreview.co.uk

I don't believe it is mislabelled as I had a similar issue with BT and at one point they actually sent me an image showing the diagram on a map of what my connection was doing (at that point it was bouncing all over the country doing an extra ~300 miles before getting out on to the public internet!).

Regardless of whether it is actually Sheffield, or misleadingly labelled management services, I can tell from my own and other's experience when this happens stuff like online gaming goes to **** even when you have a ping at face value which isn't bad.

 

[Screeeech]

don't be a betting man be a knowing man 8 years is a long time and things change,
here is a copy of the hop
136.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk [195.166.143.136]

Ok.

That IP is from an ancient Plusnet dialer pool (the RIPE entry is 21 years old) so it looks like Plusnet have renumbered some of their main infrastructure links in London, and used IPs that used to belong to an old dialer range, without updating the DNS entries (this happens all the time in ISPs).

The second thing - Plusnet don't have a backbone network, so they won't be routing you all around the country (because they don't have a network that can do that). The only network that can route you around the country is BT - and your packets will be encapsulated inside something called an L2TP tunnel whilst inside BT's network - so whilst the traffic is inside BT's network, you won't see any traceroute hops at all. (so even if BT routed you through sheffield, none of that would show up on a traceroute)

When the traffic is decapsulated at the Plusnet end in London, (which is where your traceroute will start working) you're taking a few of Plusnets internal hops somewhere in London, to get out to the main internet via their peering and transit - and that's where you're seeing this weird old DNS entry that says "Sheff" on it.

So I'm 95% sure, you're not going via Sheffield at all.

 

[On Holiday]

So I'm 95% sure, you're not going via Sheffield at all.

To back this up: I've 0.5ms latency to 195.166.143.136 from London (Telehouse, practically home of the UK's internet).

Given there's a minimum 1ms per 62.5 miles round-trip delay (because physics), yeah, that IP isn't on a device in Sheffield. It'd be 3ms minimum once you factor in serialization.

 

[Screeeech]

To back this up: I've 0.5ms latency to 195.166.143.136 from London (Telehouse, practically home of the UK's internet).

Yeah that confirms it then - if we had direct fibre to Sheffield from London, you'd be talking 3-4ms or something I imagine, if you're in London and your pinging that node at 500 microseconds - then it's impossible that it's in Sheff.

There you go OP, now please enjoy your games and stop stressing

 

[Rroff]

That isn't actually indicating what latency/conditions data passing through that node will experience, just how it is responding to ICMP (the more important thing really is what the latency is for the OP's data at the end point).

Regardless of whether it is actually Sheffield or not (Sheffield is where the back end of a lot of BT/ISP management services are located so sometimes nodes that interact with that have Sheffield in their name it seems) there is a real issue here in terms of the impact, especially if you actually are being routed an extra 100+ miles and so exposing your data to additional impact from country wide traffic so that even if the average latency isn't bad latency variance and jitter can be impacted, with a horrible result for online gaming.

EDIT: Mixed results for the IP using geolocation tools and inference - the latest real time location seems to place 195.166.143.136 in London but the last BT registry was for Sheffield.

EDIT2: Doing some pings from a server in London - for 195.166.143.136 getting min 1.55ms, max 2.69ms, average 1.96ms, pinging an IP I know to be in Sheffield getting: 5.56ms minimum, 6.75ms max, 5.96ms average. Need the full tracert really to know any more.

 

[Rroff]

There you go OP, now please enjoy your games and stop stressing

It really isn't helpful, even if OP isn't helping the situation and it might seem crazy to people who've not experienced it I know from experience what this problem is and how frustrating it is, especially when people reply like you and some others are and think the problem is entirely in the OP's head... it isn't. As can be seen from mine and other's previous posts on this issue on these forums and elsewhere on the internet.

EDIT: I'm a little leery on it but in the past someone fairly knowledgable inferred it was due to the use of a type of "transparent proxy" for traffic interception, likely related to law enforcement, not necessarily related to the user specifically. But I don't know if there is anything to that. All I know is when you get this whole "Sheffield" thing going on it causes problems for latency sensitive traffic especially gaming and apparently isn't something BT are in a hurry to fix.

 

[Locky]

It's all in your head.

Ping is like audiophiles with expensive cables.

I can notice a difference when the latency if off and poor routing. You are talking garbage..

 

[Screeeech]

Has there ever been a thread ever, where someone is complaining that they've changed ISP - as a result their ping has gone down from 12ms to 7ms, and they're complaining?

And they're not even saying there's a problem with their experience (Jitter, PL, whatever) - they're simply complaining that they can see the word "Sheff" in a trace route??

Gotta be a joke surely?

 

[Kanpai]

OP I get 3ms in London I'll let you rent a room at my place for £2,500 pm

 

[Rroff]

Has there ever been a thread ever, where someone is complaining that they've changed ISP - as a result their ping has gone down from 12ms to 7ms, and they're complaining?

And they're not even saying there's a problem with their experience (Jitter, PL, whatever) - they're simply complaining that they can see the word "Sheff" in a trace route??

Gotta be a joke surely?

OP has had a bad experience with this mystery "Sheffield" hop, as have others in the past, and now trying to avoid a repeat of the experience. You'd probably react similarly if you'd had the same experience.

Ridiculing OP based on not even trying to understand what they are saying is a bit special really.

 

[lmfy2k]

OP. Time to call in the cavalry

 

[Screeeech]

You'd probably react similarly if you'd had the same experience.

Yeah - if I changed ISPs and my ping went from 12ms down to 7ms, I’d obviously be absolutely incandescent with rage.

Honestly man, I’d be up all night leaving rage reviews on trustpilot, trip advisor and then I’d be right on the phone to Rory Cellan Jones to complain to the bbc about this outrage.

 

[ChrisD.]

No ones throwing anything out of the pram, maybe your knowledge is to basic to understand whats going on! and to be honest I don't think you could help anyone!

Post a link to your professional qualifications and I go next, deal? Or I can explain how I’ve helped household names move their workloads over the internet or between data centres. Up to you.

Have you posted a full traceroute yet which many have asked for?

Or will you continue to post complaints with no meaning and appear as if you are stomping your feet.