Which ISP has the best routing to EU?

[NickTheEagle]

Im on Afrihost and for some reason, my ping is 190+ instead of the usual 160-170ms, and it's very frustrating. They say they're working on a solution but im at the point of switching to a new ISP if they can guarentee that ill have lower ping to EU servers.

Im pretty ignorant with this type of stuff and im obviously not network expert but is there objectively a "best ISP" for ping to EU atm?

Thanks

 

[AinsleyHarriott]

Try a VPN?

 

[TheGhostRider]

Unfurtuneatly VPN will make matters worse because now it has to get from where your ISP Exchange is to the VPN and then from the VPN travel to DESTINATION X...... and some VPNS will take a much longer route for security.

 

[TheGhostRider]

As for the lower latency. its a dificult situations since you can only go that much closer. the only way to reduce Latency is to reduce the distance as well as the Ammount of HOPS you need to go through before getting to Destination X . and even then most ISPs will route differently during certain hours and depending on Loadshedding aswell. there is some tests you can try do to see though how many Exchanges you hop before getting to your prevered distination .

 

[AinsleyHarriott]

Unfurtuneatly VPN will make matters worse because now it has to get from where your ISP Exchange is to the VPN and then from the VPN travel to DESTINATION X...... and some VPNS will take a much longer route for security.

Not necessarily. If he places himself in Europe and the routing to the VPN is good he might stand a chance.

Run a trace route to test it quicker.

 

[TheGhostRider]

Yes but in most cases the VPN will give him more traffic over that latency . causing stutter because each Bit going through the connection gets scanned or checked so either his receiving chunks or sending chunks will be delayed and in those cases some the online servers will then go ahead and BAN you off there hardware because your connection can cause RED flags in the backend system to go off. same what you would experence playing over a very bad comnnection the (connection) to the server looks SUS to the anticheat which will then lead to FLAGGED IPs causing more chaos on Public IP and or Random Anti-Cheat Bans.

 

[TheGhostRider]

@NickTheEagle If you want to run some tests I could try and assist you that way you can run them at random and see what results you get off your current ISP.

 

[IOPS]

I've been around a few ISPs and keep coming back to Afrihost, things just seem to work. Maybe we can see where your additional latency is coming from. Any traceroutes to share?

If I do a traceroute to Hetzner in Germany it's pretty stable. I'm in CPT.

--- fsn.icmp.hetzner.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 169.769/170.066/170.570/0.290 ms

 

[NickTheEagle]

So Afrihost was always around 160 which is why it's annoying that its 30ms higher now. I feel like this is an Afrihost issue not a general "South African problem".

From Afrihost:

"Issue: we have multiple routes between JHB and Europe. We have the East Coast route JHB > DUR > France > UK and we have the west coast route JHB > CPT > UK

The East Coast route has higher latency but we have to load balance traffic between the 2 routes due to high traffic. This might cause higher-than-usual latency to some servers in the EU.

Our latency is not ideal in certain situations

There is a project in place to resolve this issue of which some information cannot be disclosed"

So I don't think there's anything I can do as an end user to fix this besides switching ISPs?
I use Exitlag and it used to make a difference and take me down to around 150ms and now it doesn't effect anything.

 

[Jinzaroth]

I am in Cape Town, on "Cool Ideas" and often have ping in the 150-160ms Range, game dependent. I did research before hand, asked colleagues, asked the ISP to ping a set of IP addresses linked to the games I play and they provided all of that information before I signed with them. They genuinely have been willing to assist at every turn and have provided consistent support since.

I have been with Afrihost before shifting to fibre and also had no issues with their service.

Happy to assist with any tests you would like me to run, if it will help your decision making process.

 

[PaladinLaw]

100% cool ideas.

I know their internal networking / peering, you'll struggle to find better EU ping than through them

 

[Soul Assassin]

So Afrihost was always around 160 which is why it's annoying that its 30ms higher now. I feel like this is an Afrihost issue not a general "South African problem".

From Afrihost:

"Issue: we have multiple routes between JHB and Europe. We have the East Coast route JHB > DUR > France > UK and we have the west coast route JHB > CPT > UK

The East Coast route has higher latency but we have to load balance traffic between the 2 routes due to high traffic. This might cause higher-than-usual latency to some servers in the EU.

Our latency is not ideal in certain situations

There is a project in place to resolve this issue of which some information cannot be disclosed"

So I don't think there's anything I can do as an end user to fix this besides switching ISPs?
I use Exitlag and it used to make a difference and take me down to around 150ms and now it doesn't effect anything.

Afrihost has a "gaming VPN" now, I think this is the secret project they didn't want to tell you about:

Afrihost Gaming PPTP [alpha]

Update: Afrihost Cape Town PPTP | pptp.afrihost.capetown | 169.1.2.37 Afrihost Durban PPTP | pptp.afrihost.durban | 169.1.3.19 My vision for this project is a simple quick-click connect to change regions and steer traffic where possible. This project is still a work in progress. JHB server...

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