Hi,

I was a little surprised to see that my latency to newark1.linode.com was lower than to fremont1.linode.com. Does this look like a normal route from Alberta, Canada to Fremont? Do packets go from Calgary to Vancouver then down the west coast directly to Fremont? Is this not worth worrying about?!

To Fremont:

traceroute to fremont1.linode.com (64.71.152.17), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.628 ms 1.141 ms 1.097 ms
2 <snip>.abhsia.telus.net (<snip>) 8.363 ms 8.838 ms 9.359 ms
3 154.11.184.193 (154.11.184.193) 11.995 ms 11.902 ms 11.302 ms
4 75.154.215.131 (75.154.215.131) 55.190 ms 53.889 ms 54.427 ms
5 173.182.200.126 (173.182.200.126) 65.426 ms 66.748 ms 72.170 ms
6 10gigabitethernet1-2.core1.nyc5.he.net (72.52.92.165) 66.230 ms 65.118 ms 66.229 ms
7 v110.core1.nyc4.he.net (184.105.213.69) 76.094 ms 68.136 ms 75.110 ms
8 10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.ash1.he.net (72.52.92.86) 81.062 ms 72.032 ms 77.835 ms
9 10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.pao1.he.net (72.52.92.29) 125.824 ms
10gigabitethernet1-1.core1.fmt1.he.net (72.52.92.109) 131.221 ms 126.343 ms
10 linode-llc.10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.fmt1.he.net (64.62.250.6) 123.422 ms 123.260 ms 123.126 ms
11 fremont1.linode.com (64.71.152.17) 124.398 ms 125.434 ms 124.414 ms

To Newark:

traceroute to newark1.linode.com (207.192.68.6), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.709 ms 1.107 ms 1.130 ms
2 <snip>.abhsia.telus.net (<snip>) 8.628 ms 17.697 ms 9.017 ms
3 154.11.214.2 (154.11.214.2) 61.794 ms 75.620 ms 89.876 ms
4 chcgildtgr00.bb.telus.com (154.11.11.30) 43.068 ms 42.305 ms 42.599 ms
5 154.11.2.222 (154.11.2.222) 45.079 ms 43.549 ms 55.879 ms
6 nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.248.197) 64.009 ms 65.174 ms
nyk-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.193) 70.929 ms
7 nyk-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.248.174) 64.399 ms
nyk-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.247.19) 66.932 ms 66.264 ms
8 netaccess-tic-133837-nyk-b3.c.telia.net (213.248.99.90) 73.369 ms 73.318 ms 73.305 ms
9 0.e1-4.tbr1.mmu.nac.net (209.123.10.101) 74.356 ms 74.571 ms 73.870 ms
10 vlan801.esd1.mmu.nac.net (209.123.10.10) 71.942 ms 72.851 ms 78.061 ms
11 207.99.53.42 (207.99.53.42) 81.011 ms 75.107 ms 76.048 ms
12 newark1.linode.com (207.192.68.6) 73.190 ms 73.274 ms 74.829 ms

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it does look like it is going the direction I thought it would, with the exception of the last couple addresses:

154.11.184.193 - Edmonton
75.154.215.131 - Richmond
173.182.200.126 - Burnaby
72.52.92.165 - Fremont (he.net)
72.52.92.86 - Fremont (he.net)
72.52.92.29 - Fremont (he.net)
72.52.92.109 - Fremont (he.net)
64.62.250.6 - Chicago? (he.net)
64.71.152.17 - Nashville?

It looks like your ISP was transporting traffic destined towards Fremont over to New York City. Your ISP ends and Hurricane Electric begins between hops 5 and 6.

I don't know where your ISP is routing stuff internally (they aren't nice enough to make it obvious using PTR records in the DNS), but I suppose hauling it from Calgary to Vancouver before sending it to NYC would be the longest path they could conceivably deploy unintentionally.

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It doesn't make sense that fremont1.linode.com would be in Nashville. It seems that's just where theshore.net is located, which Linode is (was?) affiliated with. What this means is that you can't always trust the the locations reported by free IP lookup services.

The traceroute to Fremont also contains nyc5.he.net, ash1.he.net, pao1.he.net, etc. The names seem to belong in New York City, Ashburn (VA), and Palo Alto, respectively. You should probably ignore the fact that the all of those IPs point to HE's headquarters in Fremont. Likewise, just because 173.182.200.126 points to Burnaby, B.C. it doesn't mean the machine is in Burnaby. Burnaby is just the location of Telus's headquarters. Your packets might be making trips to the East Coast.

Ya, I was kinda wondering about those online geo ip tools, as I was getting some pretty mixed results depending on which one I used.

I'll see if I can get in touch with anyone at my ISP, and look into this a bit more.

Thanks

HE doesn't come into Canada anywhere but 151 Front in Toronto, although it's odd that Telus isn't sending it through Seattle...

Oh well, Telus is one of the giant ILECs... They usually have dumb peering policies.

FYI, for those Americans wondering, Telus is the incumbent ILEC for most of western Canada. They're huge (22% national marketshare compared to Bell's 42%), and can trace part of their lineage back to AT&T (as can Bell).