Slow Slow Slow BTG Downloads!!!

[thepiedpiper]

Sorry i havent replied for a few days I have been pretty busy. Anyway, your tagged image is too small bujrocks, but I will say if your are getting a time out at hop 2 then you definately have a problem with your ISP and personally I'm suprised you dont encounter these kind of problems on other websites. The second hop is the very first external destination your request goes to which, means in your case that the problematic node is probably in California so I am pretty sure comcast is aware as I expect other customers to have reported this already.

I also did a quick reverse lookup for 208.68.139.89 and this appears to be a server belonging to the road runner ISP. The server comes back with the address twcdns.fastsearch.net and is located in Needam Heights in Boston. I would assume this is a one of the logical 'hops' ping requests will follow coming in from the west coast. I'm currently in the UK and i cannot ping this server as it times out on all requests. This may well be the time out that bujrocks experienced but I wouldn't expect a server in Boston to be the first hop after his router. Anyway this server is definately down so it will affect the connection speeds of anyone who's ISP uses this server.

For your reference Neil I can ping BTG just fine a reach the server in eight external hops with an average ping of <50ms so no problems from here

[GroobySteven]

We think the problem may be fixed as we saw a rise in the traffic yesterday.

[bujrocks]

Seanchai,

The problem hasn't been fixed on my end, I just tried downloading another video and i'm still getting less than 100kb/sec speed (averaging 55kb/sec) on BTG.

[bujrocks]

And Seanchai,

I did the tracert on the millenniumtga.com and at step two in the process it timed out as well.

[bujrocks]

So the problem continues. I just called Comcast and they said that they don't use "tracert" to troubleshoot the problems but they did check all of my connections from their end to my home and said everything was great. Next the service guy had me do a ISP speed test and I was downloading at 20Mbps and uploading a 4.7Mbps on my wireless connection. So basically he said that there is nothing they can do on their end.

So that brings me back to the original issue, is the problem on Grooby's servers and how do we fix this so that people can get full download speeds.

[thepiedpiper]

I can assure you that your fault lies with comcast. Unfortunately technical staff at ISPs can be a bit of a pain. They have very limited technical training and often stick to a script of diagnostics given to them by management. Tracert is a valid networking diagnostic tool and is an essential tool when troubleshhoting the kind of problems you have. It is very likely that the operative at comcast told you that they don't use tracert because he/she doesn't know what it is.

When visiting any website your request will go via a number of servers before reaching the website destination this will always differ depending on location and ISP. The fact that the second hop or node times out suggests that the faulty server is nearby and may be owned by comcast. It would also suggest that you would encounter the same problem when visiting other websites namely ones stored on servers in Europe. You could test this by pinging a few google extensions like google.co.uk, google.fr and google.de or any other European website. If my assumption is correct the ping request will comeback with an average higher than 100ms or timeout.

Also I am also almost 100% certain that if you tried to dl a video using a similar connection in your area but via a different provider you would be fine. I believe that the free wifi in all mcdonalds 'restaurants' have a 2-4 Mbps connection so if you tested there you would get 100-300 kb/s proving this statement. Either way what you have reported strongly suggests a problem with your provider.

[GroobySteven]

The problem is NOT on our servers.
We've demonstrated that with the details above.

The fact that Comcast does not want to use tracert's might indicate they know they have problems.

I really can't help as it's out of our hands.