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rcilink
Premium Member
join:2003-12-15
Manchester, NH

rcilink

Premium Member

Fairpoint backhaul - three providers now?

I'm not expecting anyone from Fairpoint to actually post here, but...

I have been trying to figure out if Fairpoint replaced the backhaul to Verizon (alter.net).. I am now thinking they have not replaced it, but brought online additional backhaul providers (cogentco.com and above.net).

I believe they are doing some sort of load balancing across their providers.

Here's how I found it:

1. Do a traceroute to 173.194.73.104.
# traceroute 173.194.73.104
traceroute to 173.194.73.104 (173.194.73.104), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  64.222.166.64 (64.222.166.64)  4.783 ms  4.792 ms  4.779 ms
 3  POS3-0-0.GW3.BOS4.ALTER.NET (208.192.176.133)  6.908 ms  6.917 ms  6.905 ms
 4  0.so-0-1-1.XL3.BOS4.ALTER.NET (152.63.22.170)  6.904 ms  6.904 ms  6.899 ms
(snip)
 

2. Do a traceroute to 173.194.73.103.
# traceroute 173.194.73.103
traceroute to 173.194.73.103 (173.194.73.103), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  64.222.166.104 (64.222.166.104)  19.331 ms  19.343 ms  19.333 ms
 3  burl-lnk-70-109-168-138.ngn.east.myfairpoint.net (70.109.168.138)  19.322 ms  19.314 ms  19.302 ms
 4  te7-5.ccr01.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com (38.104.52.21)  19.290 ms  19.282 ms te8-5.ccr02.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com (38.104.52.29)  159.151 ms
(snip)
 

--
When I did the above test, the IP ending with 103 was sent through cogentco.com and the IP ending with 104 was sent through alter.net. If you get the same provider for both traceroutes, change the IP ending from 103 to 101 and try again. Keep changing it down by one number until you see the other provider route your traffic.

Both of the above IPs belong to the "www.google.com" server pool.

The "above.net" provider was used to connect me to www.yahoo.com.
# traceroute www.yahoo.com
traceroute to www.yahoo.com (98.139.183.24), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  64.222.166.64 (64.222.166.64)  5.504 ms  5.490 ms  5.463 ms
 3  pool-64-222-213-132.port.east.myfairpoint.net (64.222.213.132)  10.295 ms  10.304 ms  10.279 ms
 4  xe-1-2-0.mpr4.bos2.us.above.net (64.125.71.169)  22.829 ms  22.829 ms xe-0-2-0.mpr4.bos2.us.above.net (64.124.202.29)  22.826 ms
(snip)
 

Having multiple peering agreements and allowing us to have access to the three providers is a good improvement to the bandwidth starvation we have been subjected to.

Now the real question.. Is this going to be the long-term fix for Fairpoint or just until the peering agreement with Verizon (alter.net) expires?

anon1
@myfairpoint.net

anon1

Anon

Haven't hit above.net yet, but going through the Cogento.com transit a few days ago felt like I was back on 28k dialup...going from ~2mb/s download to less than 6kb/s.

Alter.net is still going fast as intended.

JGatsby
@myfairpoint.net

JGatsby to rcilink

Anon

to rcilink
Funny you should mention this, I just discovered something similar -

I'm seeing most US traffic going out over Above.net but if I check something in the UK, it still goes out over alternet. I would guess that they are routing their traffic based on peering costs.

At the same time, something is still not right with their routing as of last night and through this morning. I'm seeing oddities that I can't quite figure out yet.

-Gatsby

Windham
@verizon-gni.net

Windham

Anon

Cogent is the crappiest bandwidth money can buy. This does not bode well for our network speeds going forward, unless the only websites you go to are hosted on _really cheap_ web hosting sites (at which point it will be staying on cogent the whole time)