Anybody who had the chance to use the internet in Europe, immediately notices that there is something wrong with web browsing in Jordan. Regular readers of 360east probably know that I am an early adopter of Orange Internet’s 8 Mbit line.
My various internet speed test have shown that my DSL line is not too bad. I mean, I get decent download speeds (in some tests I even saw speeds above 800 kbytes per second), and the line performs between the 4 to 6 Mbit range.
But the PROBLEM is the lag, or latency, experienced when web browsing. This is where the comparison to Europe start to show a clear difference. The internet in Germany, for example (where my brother lives) is snappier, even on slower lines.
Tonight I decided to use Speedtest.net to see how many milliseconds a ping takes (a ping is like one computer saying a short hello to another computer and hearing an answer back). Speedtest.net allows you to choose to do a speed test to a huge number of servers around the world.
Why is the response time for a ping important? Why is low latency good and high latency bad?
In a document written in 2000 dslreport.com said:
Low latency is very important for interactive applications, telnet sessions, multiplayer games, but high latency can also make the web feel more sluggish to “get going”.. a 200ms latency, can add 200ms to the total download time for the page for every eight or so objects on that page! Some complex pages contain dozens and dozens of components to download, making a high latency connection feel very slow. (Browsers download things from websites by default at about eight objects at a time, older browsers came setup for only four, each time one download finishes, that channel is idle whilst it waits for the next request to make it over to the remote server, and the data to turn up on the way back).
So I did my test and the results where mind boggling. Bad to Very Bad.
When doing the test from Orange to Batelco a pink took 825 ms (almost one full second) which is HORRENDOUS by ANY standard. The question is: are Jordanian ISPs interconnected or not (I recall that they are, so a ping should NEVER take this long over such a short georgraphical distance). The download speed was 6.15 Mbit (not bad) and the upload speed was .48 Mbit (expected, although I have been getting better results).
A speed test to Kuwait gave me lower speeds but a “better” ping time: 371 ms (still bad)
The best ping result was when I tested New York: 194 ms.
Why on earth does pinging a local server take so long?
Can any expert out there comment on these results: are they normal for Jordan’s geographical location?
Is the main reason for these high latency number that our ISP’s servers are not configured correctly?
Has anyone done similar test out of Dubai, Egypt or elsewhere in the region?
Can we we get to the bottom of this issue??
Comments
21 responses to “Who is responsible for Jordan’s horrible internet latency?”
It would be easier for an “expert” to give you feedback if you post the route from your pc to the server. The command on windows is tracert.
Khaled
I think you should check your routing table and do a traceroute to every server you’ve tested with. I think you’re going through more hops (routers) than you should.
I’m an early adaptor of Zain’s eGo (WiMax is supposed to have higher latency than conventional DSL) and I’m not getting full signal at my present location; here are my results Local latency is less than 80ms (5 hops), NY Latency is 190ms (13 hops). Kuwait is around 260 ms (over 20 hops).
You can traceroute either from terminal or network utility on a mac.
The hours i wasted trying to explain this to the technical support of my ISP…
– The download is fine, but since i play lots of online games, the latency is a big issue to me.
-…so the download is fine? why are you complaining then?
I just gave up hope of finding a decent ISP here…
The reason is that JTC has its bandwidth from USA, couple of years back they had the backbone with opentransit (usa), but now after reading your post, they changed to level3.net (USA also)
your screen shots shows that the fastest downloads are from the orange network, then usa, then kuwait:
goto your command prompt and type:
tracert google.com or dubai.ae
you will see that our packet goes all the way to to usa, then comes back to the emirates… there goes the latency .. and the huge number of routers we go through to reach our destination
We do not have optimized / sufficient cashing and dns servers!
do this to test my point, on weekends the internet browsing slows down to a crawling speed, but still you can download stuff at a decent/fast speed. try to download from an ftp server, i’m sure you will see the 8mg in full action, downloading doesnt add load on our isp dns servers.
another reason is that with the web2.0 and the cloud infrastructure, when you logon to facebook/hotmail/twitter etc, you are in reality requesting bits and pieces from alot of different servers, which in turn means that you are loading extra pressure on your local isp dns servers… which are again not optimized and insufficient…
lately when you access big websites, you might notice in your browser status that its requesting pages/items from static.twitter.com or assets012.facebook.com , these addresses that contain static or assets or words of that sort should be monitored by the ISP DNS admins and cache it for the longest time, as they will reduce load on our local isp dns server, and the website itself… in hopes of getting the “snappier” effect.
lastly, i know that most huge websites have server farms/data centers in different countries, to serve them “locally” which will reduce load on the main website and faster user experience in that country, other relatively smaller websites like CNN if i remember correctly outsource it to companies like akamai.com who have the server farms in various countries which serves the same purpose.
for our part of the world, we dont have online buying power, the revenues from online ads served to us are really low, therefore the big online players don’t have their eyes on us. certainly we don’t have infrastructure to host a data center here for them, case in point: aramex had their in house data center in Jordan,with around 22MG of bandwidth but now… their ip shows they are in the UK? i wonder why… You are hosting Ikbis on EC2, hopefully it will grow to have its own server farms, i bet it is way cheaper and more reliable than having it hosted here.
its my dream to gain experience in data centers and cloud architecture, but i cant see that happening here
Sorry for the lengthy reply (rant)
To understand the problem a little bit more, you need to know how far (in Internet hops) you are from the other server. So for example. Even though you might be geographically adjacent to your neighbor’s house. Your Internet connection might be routed through completely different routes
One tool to help you identify this issue is called Trace Rout (Tracert), it will show you how many hops, and the kind of switch/router you are passing traffic through to reach your destination. Naturally, less hops is better (when all other factors are held constant)
There’s another tool (if you’re using windows) called “Pathping” which is similar to a combination of Ping and Tracert. It will show you the latency to each hop along the way. That will help in debugging the issue more
But to answer your original question. Everyone is responsible. The fragmentation of the market driving ISPs to go through their own vendors without having any national backbone in Jordan.
Maybe Amman’s speed test server is having some tough time … did you try again later??
i always thought that the problem was my computer; the cache or the RAM or something else.
i hope you’re able to slove this
man i think its the DNS … try using alternative DNS Servers like OpenDNS or sth … use a combination of DNS servers from more than once source … and check if its any better …
i have 4 Mb/sec here in KSA and just now it touched the 16 Mb/s point on speedtest.net … and average DL speed is around 0.5 MB/s in BitTorrent and such …
Hi Ahmad, Im curious whats the max speed that u ever got so far on ur Orange Internet’s 8 Mbit line when u tested on speedtest.net on the jordan server. So far I have not been able to get beyond 5.5 download speed on speed test. I mean why do we pay for 8 and get 5-6 speeds. Not my problem. Orange need to improve their 8 Mbit lines from the main station.
what’s killing me even more the cap limit each month .i thought first it’s a heritage between ISPs in the world,but recently i found it’s invented by our local promising engineers,for me i am using umniah WIMAX after exceeding the cap the speed goes down to 64k ?????
obligate me to recall memories of the modem experience (the picture of that 2 pc’s and a red square running in between)…oh my god i think cracking the neighbor’s WEP-KEY is my last solution>>>>wonderful blog
Ping not pink*
I think it is a bit faster in Kuwait, slower in dubai and the slowest is in Jordan unfortunately.
even cache servers updates are slow in here, it takes more than a day sometimes to see change in a website.
Hi Ahmad, was curious why u deleted my post
My posts keep disappearing, why
have no fear, SAT internet is here. Yes, just as the cell phone made wired phone irrelevant, satellite internet will turn wired internet irrelevant. A few years from now and you will be connecting to a geosynchronous satellite that beams your http stream up and down with minimal delays. Now that Iran and N Korea (once they do it successfully) and China are launching comm satellite , expect prices for both TV and other forms of digital communications to drop significantly. At this rate, you should be able to take a mortgage out for your personal satellite to hover 35000 Km above your roof for all your comm needs.
I’m not that expert of networks and all this stuff, but it’s really funny how things goes in Jordan. I play online almost everyday on Xbox LIVE and i know that latency is very important for that, when i test on italian cities i get almost a ping
When I was in Jordan I encountered similar problems. After some troubleshooting I found the issue to be a specific route between a jordanian orange server and one in france. When I was last in Jordan all orange traffic went through servers in france, and one of the paths was VERY bad so I had erratic speeds. Also, switching to a local DNS (cached DNS on your comp) will help as then you won’t need to depend as much on the slow DNS in JO. Try doing a traceroute or tracepath and the issue will be obvious. another solution is to lower your MTU size, this helps, even though it is not a “good” solution, it is a hack since we can’t solve the bigger problem.
Hey all, I was just in Jordan and was wondering the same thing…
Even when your computer detects there is available wi-fi, you either can’t use it or it takes FOR EVER. I’m trying to get together a proposal to at least get fast, free wi-fi into Universities. I am thinking about some sort of public-private partnership situation but am open to suggestions…
from canada
http://www.speedtest.net/result/448127611.png
not to rub it in..lol
Can some people subscribing to the orange 8 adsl line post what speeds are they getting. Im finding the service a bit weak. Can u post ur max speeds. i feel orange is capping the download speed on the 8 lines
hey i want to change from orange to wi-tribe 3mb is it goood i mean for xboxlive online games ?
Thaer’s reply is very useful as an answer to the problem.
i would also like to add that jordan is operating on a single backbone, only one. which means all our traffic from our different ISPs will meet at the JTG station, thats why i’ve been telling people it doesnt matter who is your ISP bcoz it all goes through the same pipes.
secondly, keep in mind that the entire middle east is operating on 2 or 3 international cables only!, which is a joke. there are more than 200 cables connecting EU and USA alone,not to mention japan and its neighbors, thats why the overall internet is better there.
other larger arab telco companies have realized that, and have invested in building new cables, you can search about it in arabic lang. in recent news i read that Egypt will have “it’s own cable” while we share the international cables with SA and other gulf countries, but SA also said that they will be getting their own cables too.
so its not just about DNS servers or ISP, this is bigger, its also about international cables.