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ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde to 18286719

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to 18286719

Re: lol shaw routing

What "theman" is trying to say, is that since Softlayer is the destination (as theplanet doesn't exist anymore?), and Shaw and Softlayer are both in the San Jose equinix site, that they do in fact peer.

Remember that the internet is not routed manually, with people making decisions. Instead, companies meet at central points and exchange traffic. Common ones are Toronto, Ashburn Virginia, New York, Seattle, San Jose, Chicago.

So wherever companies meet up, and in which sites these companies advertise certain prefixes, your routing will follow through that site. If there are multiple sites in which a prefix is advertised, then BGP should follow the site that is the least cost to you (cost being a weight of speed, utilization, and other traffic engineering weights).

So if the companies you are trying to connect with only advertise a prefix to Shaw via Ashburn, NY, or Chicago, then you'll pop out east. If they happen to meet with Shaw and advertise the prefix in San Jose, then boom goes the dynamite.
18286719 (banned)
join:2013-02-02
Whistler, BC

18286719 (banned)

Member

thank you, i appreciate the explanation. however it seems like TSI has alot more prefixes then shaw advertised in SJ because every test i can throw at TSI cable users in my area they will get better response times, see my post in the TSI forum if your interested(link below). but so far i have not seen 1 IP in which shaw has better peering then TSI. telus has decent peering but it seems TSI is the best for BC.

»Will TSI routing be different then Shaws? ATTN BC CABLE USERS

Thanks ravenchilde.

Thanks theman.
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

TSI likely doesn't advertise anything in San Jose. TSI is using Hurricane Electric (HE.net) a large transit provider. They are also using Peer1 in other routes. Peer1 provides low-latency uplink to level 1 transit providers.

TSI's lack of their own international network means they pay to access the internet backbone, instead of being part of it.

HE.net has a massive US network, so this could lead to some great routing.

Shaw prefers to Peer vs Transit. This makes sense for Shaw. This is how the internet works. For some things, Shaw is going to be massively better. For other things the routing for Shaw will head for Seattle, Chicago, or New York. This might not respond quite as quickly.

But the internet and BGP weren't designed for low latency. They were designed to get the data there some-what reliably. (I say somewhat because TCP is design to dump packets--to sense link speed--, and UDP is designed not to need to get there at all).

Read up as much as you can on Transit and Peering. They're not the same beast.
18286719 (banned)
join:2013-02-02
Whistler, BC

18286719 (banned)

Member

fair enough, transit is like how fast your plane gets to a location, peering is like how quickly can you switch planes to keep going where you want without detours.

but it seems like since TSI use Hurricane electric that makes the biggest dif, i also noticed there dns servers are hurricane electric.

when you said for some things, shaw is going to be massively better, plz provide an example or a single ip i can test against tsi users. cause i havnt seen 1 route shaw takes that is better.
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

said by 18286719:

fair enough, transit is like how fast your plane gets to a location, peering is like how quickly can you switch planes to keep going where you want without detours.

No. Transit is like hire UPS to ship a parcel for you. Peering is like having your own distribution that meets up with another companies distribution to swap parts. Then they get it to the client for you, or trade it to someone who will, and you do them the same favor for people you connect with that they don't.

UPS might be faster and cheaper if you're small, but once you start moving a lot of product you'll have your own shipping and transport. Since you require a metaphor.

Transit is just hiring the use of someone else's large network to connect to other networks, because you don't have your own network to connect with them.
18286719 (banned)
join:2013-02-02
Whistler, BC

18286719 (banned)

Member

ok so im having transit issues because of shaws peering? i dont know why shaw would rather me go all through there network east, when they could just send me to someone else in seattle or SJ, how is it cheaper or how does it make more sense for shaw to hand me over at chicago rathen then seattle or SJ, shaw just has big pipes to chicago and not to seattle and south im guessing?

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds

Premium Member

Shaw has huge 'pipes' to both Seattle and Chicago
18286719 (banned)
join:2013-02-02
Whistler, BC

18286719 (banned)

Member

imo, it would make alot more sense to send almost 100% of my traffic to seattle or SJ, and do whatever from there, just dont come back into canada god dammit
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

No it doesn't. Remember that routing doesn't work like that. Other companies advertise their prefixes (blocks of IP addresses that they connect to) to Shaw. Typically this happens in Seattle, Chicago, or New York. Less so in San Jose, Toronto, etc.

So if Shaw receives the prefix from a company in Chicago, and that is a peering route, therefore FREE, Shaw will route that way. If a Transit provider Shaw connects with advertises it in San Jose, Shaw isn't going to pay their transit fees to take that route. That doesn't make sense.

This is all hypotheticals of course, and would depend on the route. But remember that humans are not overly controlling routing. If you want a better route, ask that service provider (game server?) to ask their ISP to advertise Shaw a route at equinix in San Jose or Seattle. LOL. See how far you get.
tlhIngan
join:2002-07-08
Richmond, BC

tlhIngan

Member

My usenet provider lets me pick one of three backbones they connect to for best speeds, so I'd expect there would be hosting companies that allow the same thing as well.

So asking to be switched to another backbone is a possibility. Though, depending on how things are, you may have to switch to a new provider and the option may cost money...
34764170 (banned)
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON

34764170 (banned)

Member

said by tlhIngan:

My usenet provider lets me pick one of three backbones they connect to for best speeds, so I'd expect there would be hosting companies that allow the same thing as well.

So asking to be switched to another backbone is a possibility. Though, depending on how things are, you may have to switch to a new provider and the option may cost money...

That's a very specific scenario that becomes very difficult to do widespread in an IPv4 world due to the lack of address space. They are doing traffic engineering by advertising certain netblocks only to certain providers and then providing servers within those specific netblocks. As in one or more servers is in /24 A, one or more servers is in /24 B, one or more servers is in /24 C and so on.
34764170

34764170 (banned) to ravenchilde

Member

to ravenchilde
said by ravenchilde:

TSI likely doesn't advertise anything in San Jose. TSI is using Hurricane Electric (HE.net) a large transit provider. They are also using Peer1 in other routes. Peer1 provides low-latency uplink to level 1 transit providers.

TSI only has a POP in Vancouver. They do not have a network that reaches out from there; so they're definitely not connecting to any peering points in San Jose themselves, only via Hurricane and Peer1 as their respective transit providers.
said by ravenchilde:

TSI's lack of their own international network means they pay to access the internet backbone, instead of being part of it.

There are very few networks connected to the Internet that do not purchase transit from someone. Those being the tier 1 transit providers.
said by ravenchilde:

HE.net has a massive US network, so this could lead to some great routing.

It is not really the size of their network that matters so much as their very open peering policy. Tier 1 networks have massive networks but over all their peering with respect to the number of networks they reach directly is pretty poor. Even the largest transit provider in the world Level3 with the largest customer base pales in comparison to Hurricane when it comes to direct connectivity to networks.
said by ravenchilde:

Shaw prefers to Peer vs Transit. This makes sense for Shaw. This is how the internet works. For some things, Shaw is going to be massively better. For other things the routing for Shaw will head for Seattle, Chicago, or New York. This might not respond quite as quickly.

It is not a matter of simply peering vs transit. That is a pretty black and white view of things. But then again a lot of the statements from both sides in this thread have been fairly black and white where as the reality of the routing situation is more nuanced. Connor has only provided one example destination where he is seeing sub-optimal routing and then complaining that more or less all routing is crap. There needs to be more examples to try and determine why things are not having such optimal routes. Shaw unlike Telus does have peering and transit out of Seattle, but as shown with the one example to photoscope they're taking a path via NTT in Chicago even though it could be taking a path via NTT in Seattle and shaving off roughly 20 ms. Without having a look at their network routing via say a looking glass its hard to determine why their network is doing this. There are other destinations I can see that Shaw's network will take the path via NTT in Seattle instead of going via NTT in Chicago; so it is not as if Chicago is the only path to reach their transit provider.
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

I agree with everything you say Brad. I was trying to take the topic with broad strokes and a giant brush as Connor had no background on the topic. You are right, and thanks for jumping in to provide a finer detail to the topic. I had written a post much like yours, but as this thread wasn't evolving forward I had decided not to engage it any further.
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