Switching network operator and effects on network latency

Post date: Jul 23, 2017 5:21:17 AM

Just checked some backlog data from monitoring. Some physical servers just switched from network operator A to network operator B. The automated monitoring and performance analysis gave interesting and mixed results. This is great example how something is not or is better than something else. But it depends from so many different factors. In this particular case, the only thing which changed was network operator. IP addresses, servers, locations, everything was kept the same.

Helsinki to London (UpCloud) network latency dropped by 4%.

Helsinki to Frankfurt (UpCloud) network latency increased by 35%.

Helsinki to Gravelines (OVH) network latency was decreased by 11%.

Helsinki to Strasburg (OVH) network latency was increased by 41%.

So is the new network provider better or worse? It depends. This data is based on over 10k samples collected during a week using old provider UpCloud and new network provider Nebula. For service hosted on Sigmatic.

Unfortunately we don't have any servers in Amsterdam currently. Having that data could have been interesting.

As you can see from the list there are cases where latency increased very significantly due to new routing. That's part of the Internet, it's very hard to tell what the latency between A and B will be, because it depends just on so many different factors. Sure, you can give rough guess. But that can still be off by order of magnitude, especially if bad or very routing happens between.