TekSavvy → Alberta Customers Traceroute request

I was wondering if there were any Alberta customers with Teksavvy that could do me a huge favor and run a tracert command to eat.valve.net and post the results. I'm with Shaw right now, and I'm having latency issues to west coast steam servers for the past month due to routing issues.

Jesus, that's even worse than mine. Is that the cable or dsl service in Alberta? I was wondering if switching from Shaw to teksavvy would fix the latency issues I've been having to west coast Dota 2 servers. But that looks a lot worse than what I'm getting now, which is at the most, 130ms. Here's what mine looks like:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 13 ms 31 ms 15 ms rc3ar-tge0-13-0-13-1.ed.shawcable.net [64.59.185.9]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms rc1we-tge0-7-0-0.ed.shawcable.net [66.163.70.25]
5 27 ms 25 ms 26 ms rc3sc-tge0-0-0-15.wp.shawcable.net [66.163.64.142]
6 43 ms 42 ms 42 ms rc4ec-hge0-9-0-1.il.shawcable.net [66.163.77.202]
7 41 ms 41 ms 41 ms chi-b21-link.telia.net [62.115.12.85]
8 43 ms 43 ms 45 ms level3-ic-306666-chi-b21.c.telia.net [213.248.97
.22]
9 97 ms 98 ms 98 ms vlan51.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.138.158]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 106 ms 103 ms 120 ms ae-2-52.edge2.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.69.147.171]
13 69 ms 79 ms 72 ms eat.valve.net [192.69.96.1]

What do you mean "worse than mine"? 10ms to Valve is pretty nice in my book.

I think you might have misread?

It's nearly half the jumps and only 10ms latency.

7 eat.valve.net (192.69.96.1) 10.213 ms 10.533 ms 10.203 ms

You're right, I did misread. I was looking at the numbers after the period. One last question, would the cable service be affected similarly as my Shaw service? As I understand Teksavvy operates on the incumbent's network, so I'm worried that if I switch from Shaw cable to the Teksavvy offering it won't fix the problem. Would the DSL be a better option? Or are the routes the same on both services?

it depends what your issue is. is it a Shaw routing/transit issue on their network or is it a node issue (in the first few hops)?

if it's routing then TSI wouldn't be affected by Shaw's issues, but if the issue is on the first few hops then it's likely a node or line issue and would follow you where you go until the issue was resolved.

the best way to determine this is to get mtr or winmtr and run it against the host you're testing for a good 2 minutes and post the results here if you're not sure how to tell where the issue is.

I think the first few hops are fine. It's the last few hops where the ping spikes up to 100-130. I've tried using a VPN and it fixes the ping issue. I talked the their tech support and they said that there was nothing they could do because the problem was with the last few hops, in Seattle and Chicago, I believe.

Well they could do something, they just choose not too.

Like peer with someone on the west coast instead of sending traffic east and then west again.

so it looks like it is in fact a routing/transit issue with Shaw looking at your trace you're going from Edmonton to Chicago and back to Seattle.

while TSI goes from Edmonton right to Vancouver (I assume Alberta customers go directly to Vancouver?) and down into Seattle (much more efficient). altho I assume Gabe did that trace from equipment near Vancouver and not actually Alberta judging by his first hop being about 1ms to Vancouver

I think I might make the switch. I'd be happy with the old 60ms I used to get to Dota 2 servers, so anything below the 130+ I'm getting now would be an improvement.

Correct. I live in Calgary but my IP address and my first hop put me in Vancouver.

Here's my trace:

traceroute to eat.valve.net (192.69.96.1), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 1.265 ms 1.149 ms 1.135 ms
2 erx01.van.teksavvy.com (76.10.191.6) 34.455 ms 34.523 ms 33.930 ms
3 ae0_1600-bdr01-van.teksavvy.com (76.10.191.28) 33.217 ms 33.475 ms 33.385 ms
4 69.90.31.241 (69.90.31.241) 33.798 ms
provinceofbc-van-gw.peer1.net (64.69.85.73) 33.200 ms 33.707 ms
5 10ge.xe-0-0-0.sea-wes7-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.88.30) 37.706 ms
10ge-xe-0-1-0.van-hc16e-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.115.130) 33.379 ms
10ge.xe-0-0-0.sea-wes7-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.88.30) 37.707 ms
6 xe-10-0-0.edge1.seattle3.level3.net (4.59.232.1) 37.312 ms 37.708 ms 37.494 ms
7 ae-2-52.edge2.seattle3.level3.net (4.69.147.171) 37.622 ms
4.68.105.13 (4.68.105.13) 37.472 ms 37.634 ms
8 eat.valve.net (192.69.96.1) 42.640 ms
ae-2-52.edge2.seattle3.level3.net (4.69.147.171) 37.704 ms
eat.valve.net (192.69.96.1) 42.564 ms


so that's a more realistic traceroute for an Alberta customer, ~30 ms to reach Vancouver is about right and pretty good.

Thanks for the tracert JohnYYC25. I called teksavvy and I have my trasfer date set. I was trying to set a cancellation date with Shaw, but they told me that I can call in and cancel the day of or the day before. Does anyone else have any experience with this? Is there anything I can do to make this go smoothly?

No worries. Anything to help people make the switch from the big guys.

I was a Shaw customer before switching to TekSavvy a couple years ago. I actually kept both services for a week and then canceled my Shaw service. All I did was take my modem into a retail location. Then they tried to get me to stay and all I could do was laugh. I told them if they could offer me UNLIMITED bandwidth for $67.80/month(25Mbps UNLIMITED + Dry Loop(service over telus lines)) I'll stay and they couldn't, but I wasn't expecting them too anyway.

Did you go cable to cable or dsl cable?

Cable to DSL

So I switched, shaw cable to teksavvy cable. Here's the difference in latency to Valve's uswest dota 2 servers (compare to shaw tracert above):

Tracing route to eat.valve.net
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1

Weird, my tracert got cut.

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 11 ms 10 ms 13 ms 198-48-128-1.cpe.pppoe.ca [198.48.128.1]
4 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms ae0_1509-bdr01-van.teksavvy.com [76.10.191.49]
5 26 ms 24 ms 25 ms 69.90.31.241
6 29 ms 31 ms 29 ms 10ge.xe-0-0-0.sea-wes7-dis-1.peer1.net [216.187.
88.30]
7 31 ms 43 ms 43 ms xe-10-0-0.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.59.232.1]

8 30 ms 33 ms 31 ms 4.68.105.13
9 37 ms 31 ms 30 ms 4.68.105.13
10 36 ms 37 ms 35 ms eat.valve.net [192.69.96.1]

Hi guys I'm having massive latency issues with DotA servers as well, I was hoping someone could give me some insight on what my tracert means to the eat.valve.net

here it is:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\AUSTIN DESKTOP>tracert eat.valve.net

Tracing route to eat.valve.net [192.69.96.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms LONE-STAR-OUTPO [192.168.0.1]
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 176 ms 171 ms 145 ms eat.valve.net [192.69.96.1]

Trace complete.

Thanks!