Shaw → Re: [ALL] Ask ShawSean

Hi Sean, can you explain why my Vancouver VPN is getting ~20ms lower latency to many west coast servers from Calgary? It seems to me that it would be an extra layer and it's extremely annoying to have the higher latency in some online games. Telus Optik users are also getting around the same as the VPN latency.

No VPN

Tracing route to 107.6.89.37 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 12 ms 11 ms 20 ms 64.59.132.33
3 27 ms 26 ms 24 ms rc2wh-pos0-8-2-0.vc.shawcable.net[66.163.76.10]
4 28 ms 33 ms 28 ms 66.163.76.150
5 29 ms 28 ms 27 ms xe-8-2-3.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net[4.59.232.81]
6 71 ms 31 ms 29 ms sea-b1-link.telia.net [80.239.128.197]
7 70 ms 75 ms 68 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.134.210]
8 46 ms 44 ms 45 ms internap-ic-140172-sjo-bb1.c.telia.net [213.248.81.134]
9 48 ms 48 ms 49 ms border4.pc1-bbnet1.sje011.pnap.net [66.151.144.16]
10 73 ms 82 ms 71 ms inapvoxcust-4.border4.sje011.pnap.net [75.98.84.246]
11 78 ms 79 ms 80 ms 0.te2-2.tsr1.sjc2.us.voxel.net [107.6.91.253]
12 78 ms 81 ms 78 ms 107.6.89.37


VPN

Tracing route to 107.6.89.37 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms 199.167.18.3
2 * 26 ms 27 ms 199.167.18.1
3 28 ms 26 ms 30 ms 64.34.110.226
4 29 ms 29 ms 28 ms oc48-so-3-0-0.nyc-telx-dis-1.peer1.net [216.187.115.130]
5 28 ms 30 ms 30 ms 10ge.xe-5-0-0.van-spenc-cor-1.peer1.net [216.187.89.205]
6 33 ms 32 ms 30 ms oc48.so-2-0-0.sea-coloc-dis-1.peer1.net [216.187.88.214]
7 30 ms 31 ms 32 ms xe-10-0-0.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.59.232.1]
8 33 ms 32 ms 30 ms sea-b1-link.telia.net [80.239.128.197]
9 53 ms 55 ms 50 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.134.80]
10 50 ms 49 ms 53 ms internap-ic-140172-sjo-bb1.c.telia.net [213.248.81.134]
11 52 ms 54 ms 52 ms border3.pc2-bbnet2.sje011.pnap.net [66.151.144.85]
12 58 ms 60 ms 60 ms inapvoxcust-3.border3.sje011.pnap.net [75.98.84.242]
13 58 ms 57 ms 57 ms 107.6.89.37


I can answer it for you.
There's a big jump from hop 9 to hop 10 on your shaw trace.
This is not something shaw can control. In fact, you hit the same interface in both traces outside the shaw network. That router (hop 6 on shaw, hop 8 on vpn) is routing shaw traffic differently than Telus and your VPN traffic for some reason. (unless they're using anycast for interface IP addresses and it's not really the same router, which would be odd).

@stolen Yeah I see them both going through Seattle at relatively the same ping so I don't understand why the end result is so different.