Bsnl

Quick analysis of BSNL-Level3 bad routing issue

I can see BSNL having pretty high latency again with most of Europe again. It seems like they are using Level3 Communications AS 3356 along with Tata-VSNL for upstream. With Level3 transit BSNL has badly screwed up reverse path causing very high latency and awful bandwidth.

anurag@laptop:~$ ping server7 -c 5
PING server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247): icmp_req=1 ttl=52 time=320 ms
64 bytes from server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247): icmp_req=2 ttl=52 time=320 ms
64 bytes from server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247): icmp_req=3 ttl=52 time=319 ms
64 bytes from server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247): icmp_req=4 ttl=52 time=327 ms
64 bytes from server7.anuragbhatia.com (178.238.225.247): icmp_req=5 ttl=52 time=320 ms
--- server7.anuragbhatia.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 319.880/**321.765**/327.384/2.828 ms
anurag@laptop:~$

Expected latency values here should be around 150ms. A packet should not take more then 150ms round trip between Radaur, Haryana to Munich located server.

It has been an interesting week at village - dry weather, (ultra) dry classes, (boring) external seminars and more of depressing environment but one can always find some hope out of such depressing environment. Overall life here is colourful but one just needs to lookout for colours. :)   One interesting case to report today - F root server has quite bad connectivity in India. Last week a friend asked me for traceroutes to all root servers and here’s what I saw when I did traceroute for F root from BSNL connection:

It has been super boring evening considering my sessional tests tomorrow. Test time is dull as always. I have been precisely measnuring latency on BSNL link from BSNL Haryana to Singapore based servers. The fluctuation in latency is pretty much common now. Someones we get 120ms latency to Singapore (an expected number based on distance) while other time it goes off as high as 310ms. Latency with openDNS nodes in Singapore makes it pretty much poor to use openDNS here.   Based on my collected data and BGPlay’s routing records, here’s what’s happening. My IP is coming /20 BGP annoucement from BSNL Autonomous System 9829 - 117.207.48.0/20. Looking at BGP table records for that block from BGPlay’s routing data archive source.

Yesterday I read about BSNL increasing speeds from 512Kbps to 1Mbps (with caps). Today I came across news in Business Line about Bharti Airtel increasing speed on wireline DSL. This is really good believe me! I am not refering to little bit increase in speeds, but I am refering to start of competition within ISP’s based on speed. Right now it’s Wireless (3G) Vs Wireline (DSL) players, and I am sure very soon we will see competition within wireline Vs wireline players. Competition is always good specially in telecom industry. We can clearly see where we stand now: from 8years of waiting for a telephone connection to 5min of prepaid sim purchase, from 56Kbps at $1/hour to 10GB data at $20 a month. We have came so far, but yet long way to go!

Today, I was reading New Telecom Policy from Dept. of Telecom. Must say I am disappointed. Everyday I hear a new story on 3G & LTE in India. About wireless we all know that due to super limited spectrum, it’s good only smartphones. Hard to call even LTE as an alternate even to DSL. LTE has yet to come, but still it will hardly compete with DSL in tier 3 cities and rural India. For tier 1 cities like Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and tier 2 cities like Gurgaon, Jaipur - broadband still suffers badly and we all know but just not accepting that wireless broadband is not way out to that. I am not against wireless broadband. I totally agree to fact that for mass deployment wireless is way to go but I strongly feel that another serious effort is needed in wired broadband connectivity. I am happy to get 2Mbps connection via 3G on my Idea cellular phone, and I don’t really complain for it’s cost because of spectrum crunch and all but I feel super surprised on fact that I get 512Kbps capped broadband on DSL when technically it can go over 16Mbps easily. It’s hard to comment on how well fiber connections to Gram Panchayats will perform. All we can say it’s good and nice initiative given they don’t create parallel infrastructure. But why Govt. is missing out demand in big cities where wired infrastructure is “decent” or can be made decent (based on demand)? I don’t see any good efforts being made by Govt. for improving broadband speeds or connectivity by making maximum use of existing copper infrastructure. Working professionals in cities like Gurgaon/Chennai still suffer badly for “decent” broadband while most of them could have given broadband - demand & technology - both of things are there. Just missing willingness on side of Govt. What’s point in FTTH now which “can” give 1Gbps speed given one is ready to pay ~$1500 a month for that sort of speeds?