barak-online.net icmp performance vs. traceroute/tcptraceroute, ssh, ipsec

Sun May 6 17:22:25 UTC 2007

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this little curiosity.

US ping (sourced from different networks, including cable customer in 
NE) to the consumer grade residental israel dsl cpe (currently cisco 
871) look really nice and sweet, gotomypc works alright, consumer is 
enjoying overall internet experience.

vnc from customer to US is a non-starter. ssh from US almost never 
works. ipsec performance is horrid.

traceroute/tcptraceroute show packet loss and MUCH higher rtt than the 
corresponding direct pings on the reported hop entries.

Is this some sort of massaging or plain just "faking it"? Or is such 
things merely net-urban myth?

Here is a traceroute snippet

  8  dcr3-ge-0-2-1.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.193.98)  31.008 ms  31.539 
ms  31.248 ms
  9  208.173.129.14 (208.173.129.14)  62.847 ms  31.095 ms  30.690 ms
10  barak-01814-nyk-b2.c.telia.net (213.248.83.2)  30.529 ms  30.820 ms 
  30.495 ms
11  * * po1-3.bk3-bb.013bk.net (212.150.232.214)  277.722 ms
12  gi2-1.bk6-gw.013bk.net (212.150.234.94)  223.398 ms  235.616 ms 
214.551 ms
13  * * gi11-24.bk6-acc3.013bk.net (212.29.206.37)  227.259 ms
14  212.29.206.60 (212.29.206.60)  244.369 ms013bk.net  *  246.271 ms
15  89.1.148.230.dynamic.barak-online.net (89.1.148.230)  251.923 ms 
256.817 ms *

Compared to ICMP echo

root at jml03:~# ping 89.1.148.230
PING 89.1.148.230 (89.1.148.230) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=190 ms

--- 89.1.148.230 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 190.479/190.479/190.479/0.000 ms
root at jml03:~# ping 89.1.148.230
PING 89.1.148.230 (89.1.148.230) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=186 ms
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=2 ttl=240 time=196 ms
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=3 ttl=240 time=187 ms
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=4 ttl=240 time=181 ms
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=5 ttl=240 time=184 ms
64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=6 ttl=240 time=190 ms

--- 89.1.148.230 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 181.572/187.756/196.277/4.685 ms
root at jml03:~# ping  212.29.206.60
PING 212.29.206.60 (212.29.206.60) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=1 ttl=241 time=179 ms
64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=2 ttl=241 time=171 ms
64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=3 ttl=241 time=171 ms

--- 212.29.206.60 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 171.388/174.375/179.968/3.972 ms

root at jml03:~# ping  212.29.206.37
PING 212.29.206.37 (212.29.206.37) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=177 ms
64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=176 ms
64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=175 ms

--- 212.29.206.37 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 175.412/176.516/177.187/0.858 ms

Joe