Monday 10th December 2012: 5.37am. Link shared: http://www.google.com
Something very odd this past week since we moved into our new flat has been the appalling internet performance with our Rogers High Speed Cable Internet. Instead of the 36Mbit we're supposed to be getting, we were seeing about 2.5Mbit. Why? Well, a traceroute showed this:
C:\Documents and Settings\ned>tracert www.google.com
Tracing route to www.google.com [173.194.38.145] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 3 ms 3 ms pfsense.nedland [192.168.2.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 27 ms 23 ms 19 ms 66.185.89.37
4 32 ms 23 ms 24 ms 64.71.241.93
5 19 ms 21 ms 21 ms 69.63.251.142
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 26 ms 26 ms 17 ms 209.85.255.232
8 33 ms 32 ms 30 ms 216.239.46.162
9 41 ms 42 ms 44 ms 72.14.232.141
10 70 ms 55 ms 63 ms 216.239.46.54
11 79 ms 81 ms 85 ms 216.239.46.159
12 97 ms 105 ms 99 ms 209.85.240.228
13 96 ms 98 ms 86 ms 72.14.233.165
14 177 ms 175 ms 172 ms 209.85.250.228
15 239 ms 242 ms 237 ms 66.249.94.93
16 250 ms 237 ms 239 ms 72.14.233.79
17 237 ms 238 ms 239 ms sin04s01-in-f17.1e100.net [173.194.38.145]
Trace complete.
Basically our packets are taking a trip to Europe, wander around for a while, and then get sent back to Canada. Not good!
So, what might be causing this then? Well, a factory reset of the Rogers SMCD3GN (I had had it in modem only bridge mode) finds the internet running at full speed with optimal routing with an IP in the 99.236.x.x range. When in bridge mode connected to my Proxmox virtualised pfsense routing firewall on its own NIC, it gets an IP in the 173.33.x.x range and the crappy speeds.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, yeah it turns out that Rogers pins the service they give you (i.e. the speed) to the MAC address of the entity which does the DHCP. If I had to take a guess, I'd bet they throttle speeds to the different cable modem based on their IP block, and that of course gets handed out by DHCP. And after?
C:\Documents and Settings\ned>tracert www.google.com
Tracing route to www.google.com [173.194.75.105] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms pfsense.nedland [192.168.2.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 17 ms 13 ms 17 ms 67.231.221.69
4 28 ms 24 ms 23 ms 69.63.252.218
5 45 ms 26 ms 16 ms 69.63.250.93
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 17 ms 18 ms 16 ms 216.239.47.114
8 34 ms 53 ms 34 ms 72.14.236.224
9 60 ms 49 ms 52 ms 72.14.236.209
10 65 ms 40 ms 48 ms 209.85.251.35
11 41 ms 42 ms 54 ms 72.14.239.93
12 52 ms 60 ms 51 ms 209.85.243.114
13 49 ms 49 ms 49 ms 216.239.48.159
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 50 ms 56 ms 52 ms ve-in-f105.1e100.net [173.194.75.105]
Trace complete.
So there you go. Slow Rogers internet when you enabled bridge mode? Try faking the MAC address of your router to your Rogers modem!
#rogersinternet #slow