My business relies on fast connections because we rent game servers.

A datacenter we are currently with has been great untill the last week. For about 5 days now latency has become worse. They are saying it is Global Crossing's problem, but i cant see how GC would take this long to resolve it.

Meanwhile my customers are upset becuase of the speed.

So what would one do at this point? Hang in there while losing business? find another provider? Other ideas?

Brad

I'd pick up the phone and call them and talk to someone that could give you more information and answer that question for you. "Look, should I go with another provider, or is this going to be fixed"?

Your server status pages all indicate "network connectivity" to five or more providers. If you have routing to all those networks, why would a problem with Global Crossing affect you at all?

Do trace routes to find out where the bottleneck is.
Then you can back up your claims to the ISPs involved.

If the problem lies in omne of your ISP's providers, then it is your ISP's responsability to contact their upstream provider to resolve the issue.

However, different providers have different SLA's.
Usually they will guarantee a 75ms or less latency within their networks.

What are you seeing in terms of latency when you do trace routes to and from the server in question to and from another host on the internet ??

If you can post the IP to the server I can do traceroutes from different locations and help determine the bottleneck router/ISP.

Your best friend is proof of the problem. Specially from different internet locations.

Got2Go

I just did a traceroute to smart-hosting.com and it doesnt look too bad (albeit maybe not optimal for gaming, and maybe not as good as you have seen it in the past).

The highest latency was on a router 2 hops from your server.
And that was a 62ms.
(Within tier1 ISP SLAs.)

ev1.net-icc-gateway-64.200.162.2.ic2net.net

The rest looked pretty clean:

12 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms lsanca3lce1-gige7-0.wcg.net [64.200.141.33]
13 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms anhmca1wcx2-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.143.77]
14 31 ms 62 ms 47 ms dllstx1wcx3-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.240.5]
15 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms dllstx1wcx2-pos9-0.wcg.net [64.200.110.129]
16 47 ms 47 ms 78 ms dllstx1wcx2-intcomm-pos.wcg.net [64.200.111.178]

17 47 ms 62 ms 47 ms ev1.net-icc-gateway-64.200.162.2.ic2net.net [64.200.162.2]
18 62 ms 47 ms * 207.218.245.38
19 47 ms 94 ms 47 ms smart-hosting.com [216.127.94.122]

But, perhaps that server is on a different network than the one you are talking about.

Got2go

Here is another tracerout taking a different BGP rout back to your server.

8 32 ms 46 ms 47 ms g7.ba21.b000605-0.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.66.234]
9 32 ms 47 ms 46 ms Everyones-Internet.demarc.cogentco.com [66.28.28.210]
10 31 ms 47 ms 47 ms 207.218.245.38
11 32 ms 46 ms 47 ms smart-hosting.com [216.127.94.122]

Got2Go

And here is yet another traceroute coming in from verio.

62 ms 65 ms 77 ms 129.250.2.74 p16-3-0-0.r00.stngva01.us.bb.verio.net.
62 ms 85 ms 92 ms 129.250.5.34 p16-0-1-1.r21.dllstx01.us.bb.verio.net.
78 ms 93 ms 108 ms 129.250.5.5 p16-6-0-0.r00.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net.
93 ms 108 ms 124 ms 129.250.10.70 ge-1.ev1.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net.
78 ms 93 ms 108 ms 207.218.245.38 [Timeout]
85 ms 93 ms 108 ms 216.127.94.122
[Reached Destination][Timeout]


Got2Go

Her is another coming in from Time Warner.

9 core-01-so-2-2-0-0.dlfw.twtelecom.net (168.215.53.89) 35.154 ms
10 66.192.246.69 (66.192.246.69) 36.130 ms
11 dist-01-so-0-0-0-0.hsto.twtelecom.net (168.215.53.62) 41.013 ms
12 hagg-01-ge-0-3-0.hsto.twtelecom.net (168.215.172.42) 43.942 ms
13 66.162.210.2 (66.162.210.2) 43.942 ms
14 207.218.245.38 (207.218.245.38) 43.942 ms


Got2Go

And here is a pretty crappy one coming in from AboveNet/MFN.

12 so-6-3-0.mpr3.sjc2.us.mfnx.net (208.184.233.141) 176.162 ms 176.06 ms 176.546 ms
13 pos2-0.mpr1.dfw2.us.mfnx.net (208.184.232.81) 215.854 ms 215.366 ms 215.385 ms
14 so-3-0-0.cr1.dfw2.us.mfnx.net (216.200.127.213) 215.382 ms 215.372 ms 215.221 ms
15 so-4-0-0.mpr1.iah1.us.mfnx.net (64.125.31.37) 219.838 ms 220.259 ms 219.812 ms
16 216.200.251.61.ev1.net (216.200.251.61) 221.356 ms 220.714 ms 220.443 ms
17 207.218.245.38 (207.218.245.38) 220.922 ms 220.719 ms 220.609 ms


Got2Go

Here is an iteresting one.
this one starts coming in using Global Crossing, but then gets routed through AboveNet.

4 so1-2-0-2488M.ar1.DCA3.gblx.net (64.214.65.141) 11.291 ms 11.267 ms 11.408 ms 11.259 ms 11.265 ms
5 208.50.13.106 (208.50.13.106) 11.321 ms 11.615 ms 11.380 ms 11.257 ms 11.414 ms
6 so-4-0-0.mpr1.iad2.us.mfnx.net (64.125.30.118) 11.490 ms 11.641 ms 11.562 ms 11.598 ms 11.470 ms
7 so-4-0-0.cr2.iad1.us.mfnx.net (209.249.0.133) 11.902 ms 11.849 ms 11.718 ms 11.924 ms 11.839 ms
8 so-1-0-0.cr2.dca2.us.mfnx.net (208.184.233.129) 12.329 ms 12.108 ms 12.044 ms 12.042 ms 11.971 ms
9 so-6-2-0.cr1.atl2.us.mfnx.net (208.185.0.230) 23.043 ms 22.991 ms 23.021 ms 22.944 ms 23.023 ms
10 so-3-0-0.mpr1.iah1.us.mfnx.net (64.125.31.25) 36.029 ms 36.006 ms 36.124 ms 35.843 ms 35.891 ms
11 216.200.251.61.ev1.net (216.200.251.61) 36.625 ms 36.587 ms 36.447 ms 36.325 ms 36.504 ms
12 207.218.245.38 (207.218.245.38) 36.986 ms 36.877 ms 36.905 ms 36.682 ms 36.658 ms


Got2Go