Worth Complaining To ISP?

[Absolution75]

So, as I'm back for the summer at the parents house for the summer, I've noticed that ping times are painful. Any multiplayer FPS game is almost unplayable at ping times of 120+. I was getting those pings back in 2001 and that was fine. But this is 2010.

A simple traceroute to my server in dallas confirms my suspision - it seems to be a problem with their network.

C:\Users\Absolution>tracert 66.207.163.196

Tracing route to 66.207.163.196 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  torrent-home [192.168.1.1]
  2    11 ms     8 ms     8 ms  24-119-54-1.cpe.cableone.net [24.119.54.1]
  3     9 ms     8 ms    10 ms  192.168.37.49
[B]  4    35 ms    36 ms    34 ms  192.168.102.57[/B][B]
  5    41 ms    40 ms    41 ms  192.168.102.53[/B]
  6    42 ms    40 ms    40 ms  64-128-89-241.static.twtelecom.net [64.128.89.241]
  7    56 ms    55 ms    56 ms  peer-01-ge-2-0-0.sttl.twtelecom.net [66.192.243.34]
  8    60 ms    67 ms    59 ms  10gigabitethernet1-2.core1.pdx1.he.net [72.52.92.10]
  9    71 ms    72 ms    73 ms  10gigabitethernet7-1.core1.sjc2.he.net [72.52.92.13]
 10    75 ms    74 ms    73 ms  10gigabitethernet3-2.core1.pao1.he.net [72.52.92.69]
 11    78 ms    76 ms    75 ms  10gigabitethernet1-1.core1.lax1.he.net [72.52.92.22]
 12    99 ms    97 ms    98 ms  10gigabitethernet1-2.core1.dal1.he.net [72.52.92.58]
 13    97 ms    98 ms    98 ms  216.66.77.126
 14    97 ms    98 ms    98 ms  66.207.163.202
 15    99 ms    97 ms    98 ms  66.207.163.196

Trace complete.

First of all, my isp seems to be using a private network. Isn't that rather... odd? Second of all. Why does it take 40ms to even leave the network? Isn't that a little high/abnormal?

A ping time of 60ms would be satisfactory considering the distance to the server - which is about what it'd be if it didn't take 40ms to leave their network...

 

[RebateMonger]

Your entire path seems to be awfuly convoluted. My tracert to 66.207.163.196 only took nine hops, with only a single pass through a Hurricane Electric (he.net) router. My average round trip ping time was 50 ms.

It looks like you are going from North Dakota to Colorado to California (through five routers down the coast of California), and then over to Dallas.

My route is basically directly from Phoenix (where I live) to that same Dallas router.

 

[drebo]

It's not unusual for ISPs to use private IP addresses as the iBGP neighbor addresses on their internal routers. It doesn't mean anything and likely isn't the problem.

The path through Hurricane Electric isn't choosable by your ISP. It seems to me that your ISP just doesn't have great peering to that particular area. Cable connections also don't come with any kind of latency SLA, so they aren't going to do anything about it.

 

[bigblueviolence]

I am in Fargo and noticed this problem now. I do not think it got bad until I upgraded to the 10 Meg internet. Do you have the 10 meg? Would it make sense that the 5 meg goes a different route?