Help diagnosing Internet speed issue

[strideram 11]

Hi,

 

I am posting this is off-topic as the speed issues occur independent of AirVPN.

 

The issue manifests in one of two ways

- all sites, speedtest.net tests against many server : all of them show slow speeds

- only some sites, speedtest.net tests against some servers : only some of them show slow speeds

- and other times every thing is just fine.

 

I am performing speedtest.net tests against servers in Richmond USA, Frankfurt Germany and Singapore. I am stream videos hosted on AUEngine.io, MP4Upload and Vimeo. When only some sites show slow speeds, then speedtests against Singapore is slow, and hd videos on AUEngine and MP4Upload are slow. The other speedtests respond with close to high speeds and Vimeo streams hd videos without buffering. This apart, I am also trying downloads of ubuntu iso from the official site, itunes from apple and kaspersky from cnet.com. The behaviour of these files are not consistent. Sometimes they are slow, sometimes they are fast and sometimes the begin fast and then slow down after a few minutes.

 

I have been complaining to the local ISP for the past 3 days but they haven't yet found anything wrong. I have given up on getting any help from them till I can conclusively and in an reproducible manner show something is wrong. As might be evident I have already wasted mutiple hours trying various downloads/streams/speedtests to help isolate a consistent pattern.

 

I am open for ideas on what tests can I perform to diagnose the issues. Regarding the streaming videos, I have tried both the flash and html5 versions of the players and the issue persists with both. The ISP cable is connected to the router. All my devices are behind the router. I have access to Windows and Mac OS X systems. The router has DD-WRT firmware on it. I thought if I connected to a VPN server in the US (when the Richmond speedtest it is reporting fast speeds) then maybe the AUEngine videos will stream faster. Alas that doesn't happen.

 

For starters I was thinking I should find what location the videos are playing from. If AU and Mp4U videos are in the southeast asia region (same as the Singapore speedtest), whereas the vimeo videos are not, then I can try investigating that. I am thinking somekinda route thingy, like if a request follows this route to this server it is consistently slow, but if it follows a different route to the same server its fast. Will that help?

 

 

EDIT: I just tried streaming the videos on my phone using 3G and it played the videos smoothly. The same videos are very slow when the phone is connected to the router Wifi.

Edited ... by strideram

[strideram 11]

I managed to find the url for one of the videos. This video plays just fine when using my phone's 3G connection. I ran some ping and traceroute commands on this server address. I did this once when the machine was connected to the local isp. And once when tethered to my phone. At both times I had the video playing in a browser tab.

 

File: http://s51.auengine.io/<redacted>

 

 

Local ISP

nslookup s51.auengine.io
Server:          <isp_dns>
Address:     <isp_dns>#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:     s51.auengine.io
Address: 50.7.180.26
------------

--- s51.auengine.io ping statistics ---
500 packets transmitted, 471 packets received, 5.8% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 162.809/230.275/454.577/43.109 ms
--------------

traceroute to s51.auengine.io (50.7.180.26), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  192.168.11.1 (192.168.11.1)  2.141 ms  0.913 ms  1.179 ms
 2  <redacted>  4.422 ms  3.225 ms  12.463 ms
 3  <redacted>  2.472 ms  2.775 ms  2.745 ms
 4  <redacted>  2.673 ms  5.361 ms  4.568 ms
 5  <redacted>  4.457 ms  3.444 ms  17.263 ms
 6  <redacted> 10.459 ms  6.681 ms  4.652 ms
 7  <redacted>  10.994 ms  5.826 ms  5.113 ms
 8  dsl-del-static-157.45.246.61.airtelbroadband.in (61.246.45.157)  243.284 ms  211.160 ms  222.290 ms
 9  te0-7-0-2.ccr21.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com (149.6.149.1)  206.040 ms  208.937 ms  247.431 ms
10  be2328.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.49.85)  207.530 ms
    be2329.ccr22.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.49.89)  239.099 ms
    be2328.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.49.85)  219.260 ms
11  154.54.73.109 (154.54.73.109)  220.096 ms
    be2314.ccr21.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.72.253)  234.423 ms
    154.54.73.109 (154.54.73.109)  218.776 ms
12  * be2275.ccr41.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.51.254)  195.150 ms
    be2276.ccr42.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.36.58)  191.536 ms
13  be2001.rcr21.ams08.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.76.218)  408.128 ms  224.397 ms
    be2014.rcr21.ams08.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.76.222)  271.373 ms
14  149.11.134.14 (149.11.134.14)  238.896 ms  217.156 ms  219.934 ms
15  * * *
... keeps on going till no 64
64  * * *


 

 

 

Vodafone 3G

nslookup s51.auengine.io
Server:          <carrier_dns>
Address:     <carrier_dns>#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:     s51.auengine.io
Address: 50.7.180.26
----------

--- s51.auengine.io ping statistics ---
500 packets transmitted, 478 packets received, 4.4% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 155.473/226.476/1937.137/111.024 ms
---------

traceroute to s51.auengine.io (50.7.180.26), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  192.168.43.1 (192.168.43.1)  4.147 ms  2.117 ms  1.992 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  * * *
 8  * * *
 9  100.64.0.2 (100.64.0.2)  40.570 ms  40.675 ms  51.910 ms
10  182.19.115.191 (182.19.115.191)  167.377 ms  174.418 ms  173.035 ms
11  * 195.50.122.237 (195.50.122.237)  237.420 ms  263.969 ms
12  vl-3607-ve-231.csw2.london1.level3.net (4.69.166.26)  226.684 ms
    vl-3608-ve-232.csw2.london1.level3.net (4.69.166.30)  232.979 ms
    vl-3605-ve-229.csw2.london1.level3.net (4.69.166.18)  173.570 ms
13  ae-225-3601.edge3.london1.level3.net (4.69.166.146)  173.754 ms  186.438 ms *
14  be3043.ccr22.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.15.245)  180.437 ms  198.813 ms  220.164 ms
15  be2317.mpd22.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.73.177)  163.621 ms
    be2315.ccr22.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.73.109)  169.325 ms
    be2317.mpd22.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.73.177)  161.360 ms
16  be2276.ccr42.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.36.58)  162.728 ms
    be2288.ccr42.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.62.150)  188.999 ms
    be2276.ccr42.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.36.58)  167.923 ms
17  be2014.rcr21.ams08.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.76.222)  170.642 ms *  180.787 ms
18  149.11.134.14 (149.11.134.14)  239.582 ms  178.609 ms  182.750 ms
19  * * *
... keeps going on like this till no 64
64  * * *
 

 

Is there anything visible in the results that explains why the video streams properly over 3G and not over the local ISP?