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UncleA
@204.117.x.x
|  POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)
In preparation for our national network upgrades, we are
redesigning our POP & Network Access Point (NAP) architecture,
converting our Denver POP into a NAP that will be routed via
private circuit to Los Angeles. This alteration will have a
minimal impact on your broadband services and requires no changes
to your TCP/IP or DNS information.
OK, so, I've been with SpeakEasy for 4+ years. If I recall correctly, I used to access speakeasy via a NAP, which routed me back to their POP in Seattle. ~3 years ago, I think, they deployed a full POP in Denver (yay). Now they are taking away the POP, and re-replacing it with a NAP? That seems to be what they are saying...
I am assuming that a POP routes all your net traffic onto various ILEC and CLEC backbones from that location; a NAP simply bundles your traffic onto a dedicate link (ATM likely) to a different POP, and from there onto a backbone. Do I have this right? If so, its going to kinda stink for me to have the most expensive net connection, with the highest latency, to game against my friends here in Denver...going from a 100ms ping. (havn't had it that bad since Doom2/dialup, or the Seattle/NAP setup)
UA | |
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) Your ping should have minimal increase - I go from southwest Ohio to Chicago (viaz a NAP)and have EXELLENT pings.
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester | |
| KatOak
VIP
join:2001-09-10
Seattle, WA
| We used to route you directly to the Seattle POP - no NAP involved - but will now be turning our Denver POP into a NAP. Instead of jumping out onto the 'net directly from Denver, your traffic will be routed via a private circuit to the LAX POP and then hit the 'net. This change is anticipated to add less than 5ms to your present latency.
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Kat Oak
Speakeasy
kat@speakeasy.net | |
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UncleA
@204.117.x.x
|  Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)
I'll still have to find some new west-coast-based gaming servers to migrate to; thats 5ms dedicated, non-routed to LA, then a few more (guessing 10-30 depending, since its now routed) back to Denver, and then my normal ping from here to the east coast...and, yes, that much latency does make a difference 
This leads me to another question: Is there a DSL-centric book or guide that will describe the architecture and design-decision processes that go on? It seems that SE spent $$$ to place the POP in Denver, and it will cost $$$ more to convert it back to a NAP (of course, saving $$$ in trunk lines and reduced rackspace in the Denver POP CO)...
Thanks a lot Kat! These guys don't lie: you do rule. Tell your boss that I said you should get a raise (or better yet, send me his email addy and I'll tell him what a rock star you are: UncleAlbert@dracaena.net).
UA | |
| | | LloydDobler
join:2002-01-03
Littleton, CO
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) So is this a permanent change? or just temporary until they get everyone's speed upgraded?
I suspect that while my latency to the POP won't increase much, I do all my gaming on east coast servers, and routing from Denver to LA then to NY is going to suck big time. I already have problems with certain servers that only talk to SE through San Francisco, I can't imagine how much worse it'll be when ALL east coast servers behave that way. (min ping 150 or so).
I'd rather be backhauled to Chicago or NY. One of the main reasons I signed up for speakeasy in the first place was because they had a Denver POP. If it's temporary, I'll ride it out.
If not, Comcast just installed fiber in my neighborhood. If speakeasy is gonna lower my performance this may finally be the push that sends me over to cable. | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
1 edit | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)
My Comcast Line Quality |
Nothing like being on an oversold node to keep that latency up, or just wait till the kid down the block starts downloading mp3's 24/7.
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
4 edits | Looks like the Denver POP was converted to a NAP this am.
Initial results show a 25 ms first hop latency increase, and a 40 ms increase to the east coast. My speed tests don't show much of a change though. Overall the connection seems pretty responsive. I just hope tweaking on their end will reduce latency a little. I've e-mailed Kat to see if this is what were to expect going forward.
Old Line Quality - Denver POP
»/quality/nil/1232622
New Line Quality - Denver NAP
»/quality/nil/1237113
New Speed Test
»/speedtests/12···71071554
What is everyone else in Denver seeing?
. | |
| | Xsk8er
join:2001-01-02
Columbus, OH |
Looks like they did this to save costs. I am sure backhauling over a private ATM link to LAX is cheaper than having a POP in Denver.. At least that's what I assume.. | |
| 
scooby
Premium
join:2001-05-01
Schaumburg, IL | Typical rule of thumb is 2ms roundtrip for every 100 miles. Denver to LAX is 1050 miles driving or 845 miles 'as the crow flies'. So that would add 17ms-22ms just to hit your gateway.  | |
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County
| I play AA - I can go from 90 ms ping to 300 ms. I now average about 175-220 (SCI servers have more ping than HomeLan) and have zero problems playing with 175-220 average. In fact I never even noticed when I had a 300 ms ping - I happened to glance at the ping on the score board.
I did online racing when I averaged 120-170 ms to the gateway (from Ohio to San Jose - the ISP I had lied when they said they had a POP in Chicago) and did not notice a ny problems...
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester | |
| | LloydDobler
join:2002-01-03
Littleton, CO
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) Well, it looks like my first hop is now 45ms when it used to be 20. I'm extremely disappointed.
I used to ping 45 to servers in texas and 90 to servers in jersey. Now I ping 75 to my favorite tex servers and 140-150 to east coast servers.
I'm still waiting for an answer to whether or not this is permanent or temporary. I'm scheduled for the speed upgrade in march, if the POP is coming back at that time then I'll stay.
I thought the reason I paid a premium price was for premium service. If the company to which I pay a premium price is going to cut my performance back to save money, it's the exact opposite of what they need to do to keep my business.
I play first person shooters. Ping time is absolutely critical for a good gaming experience. Anything over 100 is pretty much unplayable (unless you're accustomed to it and like hovering around the bottom of the scoreboard). Adding to my ping time will lose me as a customer. | |
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) They do not change POP's to NAP's then back again on whims and AA is a FPS and a ping over 100-170 is easily playable. The affect is being overstated in my opinion....
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester | |
| 
Maxxxt
Peculiar Mental Twist
Premium
join:2001-06-12
Denver, CO
clubs: 
| CylonRed  I dont play AA very much, howerver I do play other games where ping under 75ms is crucial. What if Speakeasy were to Yank Chicago and route you to NYC and tell me how you would feel about that?
A note I just E-mailed to KAT about this.
Hi KAT,
I really need to tell you(and the big bosses at Speakeasy) I am very upset over the recent decision to change the Denver POP to a NAP. My latency has gone up over 50ms from east coast locations. My speed has dropped over 300kbps to east coast locations. When I signed up with Speakeasy the SINGLE LARGEST consideration for me was the local Denver POP. I was NOT notified about these changes and I feel betrayed. The truth is I expected thing to get better here. The talk of improving equipment in all the POP's, my participation in the Gaming trail was supposed to be an effort to keep the gaming community in mind and to make our connections faster. The price reductions were nice...as a matter of fact, necessary for me to afford this service. However I am not willing to pay a premium(DSL GAMER package) for service that is no longer, in my opinion Premium. I am an online gamer, I play Battlefield 1942, Desert combat, and game with friends(that live here in Denver)on my connection here in Denver, this decision has ruined the fast ping times and speed. I hope the powers that be understand what the hell they have done and reconsider this change. I know that my next door neighbor is getting 25-50ms ping anywhere in the country 3000/256 with Comcast broadband right now for less than I pay now. I hope you can use some of your "magic" powers that get most problems resolved. I am asking you to please speak to the appropriate persons in charge of this.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter, | |
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) I have been routed from Dayton, Ohio to San Jose (where the POP for me was located) with another ISP before (and raced online with a 180-250 MS ping to that gateway with all servers on the EAST coast)... Been there, done that, had no real problems. AA is probably the most demanding FPS out - in terms of info sent and raw horsepower needed.
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
|
I agree. While I'm satisfied with the stability of my connection, I don't believe a 100+ east coast ping is worth $90 a month. Looks like I'll be looking for an alternative soon. Fortunately lots of alternatives in Denver.
I would like to know what happened to the "less than 5ms increase in ping time" as referenced by Kat above.
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County
1 edit | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) Covad might be able to reprovision the line to see if it better... You have her quote wrong as well... you forgot 'anticipated" - she guaranteed nothing as you seemed to imply. | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
2 edits |  Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)
I don't see anything in my post about a guaranty so please don't try to read my mind!
Additionally, if you read the posts, everyone in Denver is getting 35ms+ additional east coast latency as a result of the NAP (choosing my words carefully so I don't imply anything)
Shouldn't a company like Speakeasy know what the impact of changing from a POP to a Nap will be. If Scooby2 in his post above knows what the impact will be shouldn't Speakeasy?
BTW - I like Speakeasy and have been very satisfied with their service, but this has been very disappointing. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | LloydDobler
join:2002-01-03
Littleton, CO
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP) The change was 'anticipated' to add 5ms to the first hop. we are all seeing first hop ping times with at least 25 ms added. This in itself isn't horrible, but definitely not world class. However, add the time it takes to go from LA to NY instead of Denver to NY, it becomes unacceptable.
Does AA have antilag in it or something? Because while 150 ms ping times may be acceptable in that particular game, Every other FPS i've played, which includes Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, all quake 3 mods (such as threewave), Unreal, Unreal tournament, etc. do NOT have antilag.
Therefore ping time adds directly to your reflex time. It is a big deal. If this were $30 a month Earthlink DSL I'd expect this kind of service. It's not. It's $65 a month Speakeasy, the gamer's ISP.
Sure, you can learn to predict 150 ms ahead, but when playing against someone with 50 ping, they have a full tenth of a second to react to you before you see them. It turns into a huge disadvantage.
Nowhere did I suggest this was being done on a whim, I was suggesting that they may be doing significant hardware upgrades and was asking if the POP would be restored after those upgrades are done. Considering my speed upgrade isn't scheduled until March, it makes sense to me that they are doing a truckload of work here.
And regardless of whether or not you think I'm overstating the importance of sub 100 ping, every dsl junkie knows that a 50 ms gateway ping is not a high performance connection. They also know that routing from the center of the country to one coast in order to get to the other coast cuts the end user's quality and benefits nobody but the provider.
I pay more than anyone I hang with online for my internet service and I have always had the slowest dl/upload speeds. I used to justify it with the low pings and high reliability. Now I have the highest pings around and only average dl speeds.
This feature list is not worth a premium price anymore. | |
| KatOak
VIP
join:2001-09-10
Seattle, WA
| I apologize for the delay in my response - I was out ill for much of last week.
I will escalate this to determine if we can improve the gateway latency for all customers on this NAP. The decision to change the POP to a NAP was a financial one, as previously mentioned; we don't have enough customers in the Denver region to balance the cost of a local POP. This would also answer UncleA's question regarding the method behind the madness of our POP/NAP architecture - most of these decisions are made because of cost and contractual concerns.
If you have not already provided me with traceroutes, please do so via email and I will include your information in my escalation. I have a few from some of you already, but the more the better.
Unfortunately, we will not be reverting this NAP to a POP any time soon, so the best outcome of my escalation would be to decrease the gateway latency as much as possible. In the absence of that, however, I'm absolutely available to work with any affected customers to resolve their service concerns.
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Kat Oak
Speakeasy
kat@speakeasy.net | |
| willjr
join:2000-06-22
Waltham, MA
|  I have just got this POP to NAP news too. My speed has already suffered since I joined speakeasy December 9th. Now it's going to be slower? Might just call my credit card company to dispute my charges. Since speakeasy is no help. I am paying for premium Adsl service for a reason.
I am very disappointed. | |
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CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) POP to NAP should not affect any speeds... | |
| | GHz
join:2002-01-02
Needham, MA
| I just got notification of the change from POP to NAP for Boston-area customers. I used to be connected directly to the NY POP, and when I was switched to the BOS POP, I hardly noticed a difference. However, my contract will be over soon, and if this transition adds more than a few ms to my gateway pings, I will definitely look elsewhere.
Speakeasy, I have relied on your excellent service for a few years now (with 2 different connections), I hope you won't dissappoint us! | |
| | | Sunburn
join:2000-10-05
Denver, CO
2 edits | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) How can Speakeasy do this? They market themselves as a high performance service and make people pay expensive $$$$ premiums to match. The only reason I have a $160/mo SDSL connection is for the great pings! Now they morph themselves in to a service that Qwest could provide @ 1/4th the cost??? WTF kind of sense does that make? Way to trash your brand and ditch your loyal niche customers. Speakeasy kinda reminds me of the CABLE PIG.
I use to ping servers in Denver @ 10-25ms. Now my packet has to bounce from Denver to SFO and back to Denver again. That is 40ms each way for a total of 80ms. 5ms difference is not even close.
I use to be able to ping WC 40ms and EC 40ms now it is at WC 40ms and EC 90ms. You know my Comcast line is at 4200/386 and I am sorry to say the pings are way better than SE from Parker. | |
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lakino
Premium
join:2003-04-03
Campbell, CA
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) Speakeasy is not just doing it to "piss" you gamers off. As been officially explained to you, it's due to financial reasons that they are closing the Denver POP. Get more people in Denver to sign up with them and then they can add the POP back in. Otherwise, move to another city. It's not as if Speakeasy is bringing up ping times for everyone. People on both coasts are still receiving low ping times to their first hop.
For those wishing to move to Comcast, I'd say go right ahead. Once you've tried Comcast, you'll be begging to get back to adsl technology. Low ping times with cable doesn't happen often. But you'll never believe it until you've tried it for yourselves, so go right ahead and switch to Comcast. See for yourselves.
--
Why do people like .sig files so much? Baffling to me... | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
2 edits | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) I totally agree with you as it relates to Comcast, having experienced their service directly. BUT, Its clear that Speakeasy is cutting back POP's across the country besides just Denver.
The issue is not just adsl vs cable. For those markets where Speakeasy is cutting back there are other DSL alternatives. In Denver there is Qwest, Covad, Megapath, TransEdge, etc. Many of these ISP's have Denver POP's as well as lower costs.
Speakeasy has marketed themselves as "Internet For The Most Demanding Customers". (Quote for the Website!)
I believe the customers in the affected POP's and those experiencing high latency and other problems have a right to challenge these actions as they were led to believe Speakeasy was a NATIONAL Premium service. (We are after all, the most demanding customers!)
Perhaps it should change to "Internet for the Most Demanding Customers on the East and West Coast" | |
| | | | | | jxsi
join:2003-12-04
Tempe, AZ | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) What would you have them do then? Keep the POPs until they run out of money and file for bankruptcy? | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) quote:
What would you have them do then? Keep the POPs until they run out of money and file for bankruptcy?
I didn't know that Speakeasy was in such a precarious financial position, and that the closing of 3 POP's would stave off a potential bankruptcy. 
I stand corrected! | |
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AuroraMike
Time To Blow Some Bubbles
Premium
join:2002-01-06
Aurora, CO | Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) Business isn't just about cutting costs. Business is also about marketing and generating additional customers. Perhaps a little extra advertising in markets that need more business. I have never seen a Speakeasy advertisement in the Denver area! | |
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lakino
Premium
join:2003-04-03
Campbell, CA
| A-Mike, I feel your pain. It's not that I don't understand your argument. In fact, I fully empathize with you. But it's the tone of the messages that bother me. Perhaps not your messages, but the tone of other messages. It's been written as if SpeakEasy is raising ping times everywhere and purposely to extract extra profits. I don't think that's the case. It's to reduce losses I'm sure.
Also, it may be true that they can't claim to meet the demands of the most demanding customers in Denver and surrounding cities, but they can most likely still claim that for most of the other metro areas they cover.
At any rate, I'm not a SpeakEasy patron. I am neither for or against SpeakEasy. I use PacBell/SBC. Good luck with getting the low latency you desire.
(I do use sfo.speakeasy.net often to test my line speeds. )
--
Why do people like .sig files so much? Baffling to me... | |
| | | | | | | indigo
join:1999-08-22
Covina, CA
| Re: POP vs. NAP? (change in BOSTON, MA POP) As a former (unfortunately) gamer, I can certainly relate to ping times being crucial. I would think those of you in Denver would have plenty of alternative ISPs to choose through Covad. I wouldn't put up with being routed to LA and then out to the internet. The best connection for gaming is to have your ISP's internet connection closeby to where you live. That way you get the best performance both locally and nationally.
I've been through the ping and packet loss game, and it's not pretty. I switched to @home from a dialup back in 1998 and it was horrible. 20% packet loss and bad pings. When I first got DSL back in 2000 (from the local telco) I had a ping of 50ms to my first hop. Made FPSs unplayable. Unfortunately for me there are no CLECs here so I am going to have to get a T1 just so I can game again.. sad, I know, but it's the only thing I can do at this point.
I was considering at one point moving to a town in New Hampshire where speakeasy would be available, but now that they're taking the Boston POP out of commission too, I am just going to get the T1 instead. It really is a shame to hear about Speakeasy's troubles, it sounds to me like they really have been trying to please power users like us but are running into these problems.
People like us shouldn't have to pay through the nose for acceptable latency and liberal AUPs, but that is the reality unfortunately. | |
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