The ADSL explanation here was really helpful, but the usuall BT - ISP fingerpointing has prompted me to try to better understand my tracert output.
I have a close to perfect connection on HomeMax to my exchange: 8128/448 and 12-14 db margin, steady 7150 profile. At least I think so, since we lost the BT speedtester a month ago (I mean completely), but I monitor my connection for resyncs and leave the router off a lot.
In spite of this, my download speed since my connection in October has been about 75% of what I expect, rarely above 6Mbps, 6.5 absolute max one time, usually 2.5 - 4.5 Mbps, sometimes below 2 at peak times, sometimes above 5 off peak.
After reading up here on the BT network, I'm pretty sure I am routed to the Ilford RAS. I'm not sure whether my ISP, Namesco(NDO) uses BT Central Plus, but they might. They have 3 155Mb pipes and 2 622 Mb pipes if I remember numbers I saw once.
Here is an example of my tracert:
Tracing route to samknows.com [80.77.246.42]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 100 ms 99 ms 99 ms dsldevice.lan [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
2 33 ms 22 ms 11 ms namesco2-hg3.ilford.broadband.bt.net [217.41.200.74]
3 13 ms 11 ms 14 ms 217.41.200.2
4 12 ms 14 ms 13 ms 217.41.200.106
5 146 ms 270 ms 36 ms thn1-gi0-3-3.namesco.net [195.7.254.2]
6 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms lonap1.enta.net [193.203.5.134]
and some more to samknows
Questions:
1.
Am I right that hop 2 is the router entering one of Namesco's central pipes? Recently, some gamers got switched to faster pipes and for them this hop changed to a different first name component.
2.
Does Namesco(NDO) have control over the router at hop 2, even though it's owned by BT?
3.
All the hop 2's I've seen on NDO forums have 'ilford' in the second part of the name. Is it likely that all the NDO central pipes come from the Ilford RAS?
4.
I have tried the procedure for finding the RAS I'm routed to (
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/RAS.htm). I can login to speedtest@speedtest_domain and I can load the speedtester front page, but tracert and ping to the either IP always fail. Is there any other IP available to tracert when logged in to the speedtest domain?
5.
Our loss of the BT performance tester (the one which made the speedtest_domain unnecessary) appears to be a routing problem at the Ilford RAS. If I switched ISPs but still went to Ilford, might I be using different equipment and dodge the speedtester routing problem? If so I have some hope of getting better performance.
Any help greatly appreciated. More detail gladly provided if necessary.
Thanks,
Richard