> what is the issue causing it? Call it 250 Km between LM...

[mdk]

> what is the issue causing it?

Call it 250 Km between LM and EDM, making it 500 Km for a "round-trip", making it 500,000 meters.

The speed of light is 299 792 458 meters per second, presumably in a vacuum.

Cheat, and call it 250 000 000 meters per second, which is 250,000 meters per millisecond.

So, for a pulse of light, a "round-trip" of 500,000 meters will take 2 milliseconds -- for one "PING" packet to take that round-trip.

If you add "switching" and "routing" delays at end end (LM and EDM), then that 2 milli-seconds for one "PING" will expand by some factor. Maybe, a factor of "ten", if the router is also servicing other packets.

Thus, to be practical, a "PING" could take 10 to 20 milliseconds on a lightly-loaded network segment.

So, how many milliseconds is acceptable to you, on a possibly-heavily-loaded network segment?

[shaw-tony]

@suey the RF to your modem looks solid, we can rule out the coax signal connection. From what I see those pings are within acceptable ranges.

[suey]

I'm back... haha @shaw-tony @mdk 

I've been busy but I'm still not quite done with this.

I do not believe that these are acceptable ping times, I think something is obviously either outdated or not working properly for my ping to be this high.

If I want to connect to a server in Edmonton, I would have a minimum of 40 ping. When I lived in Edmonton, connecting to servers in California, I had 40 ping. The difference in distance is huge, yet the ping times are the same? That doesn't sound right.

@mdk you asked what I thought would be reasonable ping times, and I'm not sure. Maybe 20ms? It's only 312 km that my packets have to travel.

1 <1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 10 ms 8 ms 50.65.0.1
3 49 ms 48 ms 44 ms rc2we-be134-1.ed.shawcable.net [64.59.185.117]

Look at the increase in time between the 2 and 3 hop. The distance it's travelling is only 250kmh. Should it REALLY be taking that long?

Anyway hope you guys are doing well!

[mdk]

@suey -- If I want to connect to a server in Edmonton, I would have a minimum of 40 ping.

Previously, I have shown that the time for a "hop" between your location and Edmonton seems to be slightly higher than average, and I have tried to explain it as being the only "Internet Superhighway" between Edmonton and many towns to the east, both in Alberta and in central Saskatchewan.  Google Maps indicate that driving on AB-16 between ED and LM is 251 Km and their estimate is 2:36 -- call it 2.51 hours -- which makes your average speed about 100 Km/hour - no stops allowed. If you instead drive on AB-619 and then AB-14, the distance is 275 Km, with a time estimate of 3:02 -- which makes your average speed 92 Km/hour. The point is not all routes (or Internet "hops") are equal.

According to Google Maps, driving Edmonton to Calgary on AB-2 takes 3:06 for 299 Km -- almost 100 Km/hour, just like driving on AB-16.

> When I lived in Edmonton, connecting to servers in California, I had 40 ping.

This is explained by faster "hops" on Shaw's network, e.g., Edmonton to Vancouver to Seattle, and more fast "hops" on non-Shaw networks from Seattle to California to those servers. Higher capacity networks, of course.

> The difference in distance is huge, yet the ping times are the same? That doesn't sound right.

Not all "hops" are equally-busy as the ED-to-LM hop.  I don't know about the speed of the router in LM -- maybe, it just does not handle as many routing-requests per second as the routers in Edmonton/Vancouver/Seattle. Only a Shaw technician can tell you which router is located in LM.

>  you asked what I thought would be reasonable ping times, and I'm not sure. Maybe 20ms? It's only 312 km that my packets have to travel.

1 <1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 10 ms 8 ms 50.65.0.1
3 49 ms 48 ms 44 ms rc2we-be134-1.ed.shawcable.net [64.59.185.117]

Look at the increase in time between the 2 and 3 hop.

The distance it's travelling is only 250kmh. Should it REALLY be taking that long?

The answer is YES, given an explanation of a "busy" segment of networking-cable, and a lesser-speed router in LM, as compared the routers in ED, Calgary, Vancouver, and Seattle.

Hop #1 is from your computer to your Shaw modem.  Probably between 0.51 and 1.04 milliseconds, before "rounding".

Hop #2 is from your Shaw modem to the Shaw router in your town. Perfectly normal for it to be 8 to 10 milliseconds.

Hop #3 is from your town to the Shaw router in Edmonton. 

Compare to a trace through Vancouver to that Shaw router in Edmonton:

4    11 ms    11 ms    10 ms  rc1bb-be20.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.75.245]
5    14 ms    24 ms    12 ms  rc1st-be25.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.198]
6    26 ms    25 ms    25 ms  rc3no-be11-1.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.72.69]
7    37 ms    32 ms    27 ms  rc2we-be134-1.ed.shawcable.net [64.59.185.117]

An average of 25 milliseconds through Vancouver to Calgary, and an average of 32 milliseconds through Vancouver to Edmonton, via Calgary. Subtract 10 milliseconds from my location to Vancouver, to compute the Vancouver to Edmonton time as being an average of 22 milliseconds.

Now, a traceroute from my location to LM:

Tracing route to 50.65.0.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  hitronhub.home [192.168.0.1]
  2    11 ms    17 ms     9 ms  
  3     9 ms    10 ms    10 ms  rd1cv-be210-1.gv.shawcable.net [64.59.162.97]
  4    45 ms    46 ms    44 ms  50.65.0.1

Again, although there seem to be NO routers between GV and LM, the average time is 45 milliseconds, which is about the same numbers as you reported.

That router in LM is just "slower-than-average" to respond.

There is nothing you can do about it, except to contact the Shaw network technicians, and convince them to spend a lot of money to get a faster router in LM.  It must already be a fibre-optic cable between ED and LM -- no faster cable is available.

[HarryY]

I’ve been having these problems for a month and they do not listen. I wonder if people with Telus have these problems?

[talios]

My latency to pretty much everywhere doubled from edmonton yesterday too due to routes changing; hell my trip to google.ca went from 28 ms to 90; and there's a big thread on it on the shaw subreddit with people having issues; you guys dun goofed

[mdk]

@talios -- you also posted a similar comment on another thread in this discussion forum.

Please run the TRACERT commands that I suggested in that other thread, and post the outputs in the other thread.

Just like Alberta roads get pot-holes after the winter freeze-up ends, there occasionally do appear "pot-holes" on the Internet -- broken routers, and operators of back-hoes accidentally "goof" and dig into buried fiber-optic cables -- "call before you dig".

[mdk]

@talios -- Reportedly, Shaw has fixed the broken segment (Edmonton <-> Calgary). For you, is it back to normal?

[lum]

I am getting this problem now, I was getting it in the spring/summer. Went back to normal for a bit, now my games best ping servers are central. I only notice this issue with Shaw customers, all my friends/family that have Telus, Bell, etc.. do not experience this problem. I live in Edmonton too, was there a solution? Besides calling Shaw support seeking help, and all they do is tell you to turn of your modem, or reset it, if that don't work, have to wait a week for a technician to show up, personally on my last straw with Shaw, I have loved their TV side of things, but for internet and my gaming, nothing but problems.. prior to this as well. 

Hoping Shaw can get this fixed, and be back to normal.

[mdk]

@lum -- Shaw only has a few cross-border links (Vancovuer -> Seattle, Winnipeg -> USA, Montreal -> USA).

Given the "atmospheric rivers" that have caused major infrastructure damage within British Columbia, it certainly is possible that some of Shaw's links between Alberta and Vancouver are not working.  So, your servers in California must be accessed via alternate paths, and your links to "central" (do you mean Central USA) sites are not affected, unless other users have also switched from California-based servers to "central" servers, causing extra lag-time WITHIN those "central" servers.

Yes, I do hope that B.C.'s infrastructure is soon repaired, but don't bet on it -- another "atmospheric river" is coming to BC, tomorrow, and it is supposed to be larger than the previous ones.

Note that many river-beds in BC are now one foot higher than before, due to extra material being washed-down into those beds. So, all the sand-bag dykes are being raised, by manual labour.  Also, that washed-down material is wiping-out the salmon spawning beds. It will be 3 or 4 years, when the newly-hatched salmon return, before this wash-out will have a noticeable effect.