If you are a network engineer you are probably used to being blamed for every problem under the sun. If not blamed, your network is sure to be top of the list of suspects. Well, in this case, it was the network, or at least the ISP.
Like most techies I can access work from home using a remote access VPN. This allows me to check problems without having to go to the office. In my case this would not be too much of a problem as I only live half a mile from the office, but when I get a 2am call, I would much rather just fire up the VPN than drive into work.
Well, my VPN has got slow, real slow. My Internet access is delivered using WiMax and this does get slow occasionally, requiring a restart of the router to fix the problem. In this case that did not help. So my next step was to do a simple trace route:
tracert 212.x.x.x Tracing route to 212.x.x.x over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 152 ms 84 ms 73 ms 145.255.64.1 3 74 ms 78 ms 79 ms 188.135.3.5 4 53 ms 79 ms 78 ms 188.135.0.153 5 88 ms 78 ms 79 ms 188.135.0.129 6 59 ms 79 ms 82 ms 188.135.0.138 7 295 ms 209 ms 224 ms 213.242.115.25 8 231 ms 223 ms 198 ms ae-3-4.bar2.Marseille1.Level3.net [4.69.143.253] 9 218 ms 228 ms 229 ms ae-15-15.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.143.246] 10 219 ms 228 ms 228 ms ae-84-84.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.163.26] 11 237 ms 228 ms 228 ms ae-83-83.ebr3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.163.9] 12 224 ms 228 ms 228 ms ae-47-47.ebr1.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net [4.69.143.173] 13 219 ms 229 ms 229 ms ae-23-23.ebr2.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net [4.69.143.190] 14 219 ms 228 ms 229 ms ae-46-46.ebr1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.143.201] 15 218 ms 229 ms 228 ms ae-57-112.csw1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.153.190] 16 218 ms 228 ms 238 ms ae-1-51.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.138] 17 227 ms 229 ms 228 ms OMAN-TELECO.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [212.72.43.122] 18 373 ms 388 ms 442 ms 82.178.32.17 19 453 ms 398 ms 393 ms 82.178.32.9 20 379 ms 400 ms 396 ms xxxxxx.omantel.net.om [212.x.x.x.x] 21 402 ms 387 ms 404 ms 212.x.x.x
And there you have it. To get from my apartment to the office half a mile away, I go from Oman to France on to Germany into Holland and back to Oman. Unfortunately this means that half the in-country users of our web services take the same tour of Europe.
A big thanks to my ISP. Their motto, ironically, is Get Closer.