SBH Internet

Petri

Senior Insider
There's been a saying that the internet in St. Barth is bad, one shouldn't except much, it's a island, and there isn't bandwidth available. Some people even say it's connected by a satellite.

So while on the island last spring two different occasions, I checked out the details a bit from the user perspective. Thank you for the villa owners for keeping the default passwords :)

A bit of basic understanding for the non-technical people; Internet works in layers. When you surf to sbhonline.com from your villa, the traffic happens at IP level between hosts with IP addresses like 10.7.107.17. Your browser doesn't know how you are actually connected, it's just traffic from IP address A to B without any idea how it flows.


IP packets are like your UPS delivery from Apple manufacturing in China. The packets hop from "city to city", "airport to airport" and end up at your doorstep. These packets go back and forth all the time. The trunk lines, "trucks and planes" between cities and airports can be shared by multiple packets, just like your UPS package. In the Internet the same link can be shared by UPS, Fedex and DHL. Happy folks they are.


These packets are encapsulated in various layers, "wrapped in cargo containers for longhaul". The IP packet gets encapsulated for the physical media, like a DSL line or ethernet cable. And at the bottom there will be the physical layer that tells how to transmit 1's and 0's on that piece of copper or fiber cable. Your ADSL modem is the one that takes the IP packets from ethernet frames, turns them into ADSL frames and into electronic signals on the copper phone line. But your browser will never know about this.


In real life things get a bit more complicated as there may be additional layers for authentication, separating traffic from each other, and using the same physical infrastructure for multiple customers and even carriers. And with the layers, each layer can often be from different A to B. A single fiber can carry a lot of data.
 
Villa A near St. Jean

Let's start with a villa near St. Jean. The ADSL line had a raw upstream speed of 1 Mbit/s and raw downstream speed of 15.6 Mbit/s, using the latest ADSL2+ technology. These speeds are pretty good and tell that the other end of the ADSL line is less than 2 km away. The line uses PPPoA technology which means a lot of layers, your IP packet will be inside a PPP frames, inside ATM frames and inside the ADSL frames.


The PPPoA technology gives the option to terminate the customer connection further away, if it made any sense, the next hop of the connection from the villa in St. Barth could be in New York. Sometimes it makes sense to terminate the connection further away to make administration easier.


So how does the traffic flow from Villa A?


Let's start with a traceroute to a finnish newspaper web site:


traceroute to www.hs.fi (158.127.30.40), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 2.178 ms 0.991 ms 1.336 ms
2 net1lo-bidon.bsami113.amiens.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.3) 24.693 ms 25.605 ms 24.819 ms
3 80.10.245.253 (80.10.245.253) 25.997 ms 26.746 ms 25.539 ms
4 pos0-3-0-0-100.nyktr3.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.248.2) 75.289 ms 76.319 ms 74.629 ms
5 tengige0-3-0-6.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.151.240) 72.888 ms 71.446 ms 72.857 ms
6 te0-0-0-12.ccr21.jfk07.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.229) 70.540 ms 70.671 ms 71.915 ms
7 be2059.mpd22.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.221) 71.038 ms
be2056.ccr21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.44.217) 71.133 ms
be2057.ccr22.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.80.177) 70.623 ms
8 be2094.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.30.14) 76.504 ms 76.425 ms
be2097.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.30.118) 76.849 ms
9 be2386.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.44.162) 161.214 ms
be2387.ccr22.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.44.166) 155.340 ms 155.650 ms
10 be2182.ccr41.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.77.245) 158.531 ms
be2183.ccr42.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.58.70) 156.333 ms 155.327 ms
11 be2187.ccr42.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.74.126) 163.529 ms
be2186.ccr41.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.74.122) 160.751 ms
be2187.ccr42.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.74.126) 164.247 ms
12 be2281.ccr21.sto03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.63.2) 184.862 ms 184.080 ms
be2282.ccr22.sto03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.72.106) 182.787 ms
13 be2396.ccr21.sto01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.50.122) 184.255 ms 180.472 ms 181.148 ms
14 cgnt-130.kn1.sth.portlane.net (149.6.168.130) 176.175 ms 176.720 ms 179.443 ms
15 rai1-tr1.dnaip.fi (62.78.107.175) 194.278 ms 199.186 ms 194.742 ms
16 hel5-tr3.dnaip.fi (62.78.107.12) 182.745 ms 182.071 ms 186.221 ms
17 hel1-tr2.dnaip.fi (62.78.107.124) 191.398 ms 191.039 ms 187.591 ms
18 * * *


Traceroute is one of the basic tools to see how traffic flows at the IP level. The time for each hop tells the round trip time, how many ms it takes for a packet to reach that hop and come back. As there's a limit how fast light goes, the rtt can give an idea how far we've gone, for example when we cross the ocean.


Hop #2 tells that Villa A has ADSL from Orange (France Telecom). This also tells that the PPPoA layer is not terminated in St. Barth but all traffic from the Villa goes to St. Maarten before it enters France Telecom's IP network. Easier for administration.


Hop #3 is the router to France Telecom's OpenTransmit global backbone and on Hop #4 and #5 we're already in New York! There's no direct link between St. Maarten and New York but again the IP network and physical network are separated, just like there's a physical link between St. Barth and St. Maarten. Thehe IP traffic from the villa goes straight to St. Maarten.


The physical connection from St. Maarten to New York is most likely using the GCN, Global Carribean Network, that connects a lot of Caribbean islands with 2.1 Tbit/s capacity and further to the US from Puerto Rico with other links. Puerto Rico is a well connected hub in the region. For example the new Pacific Caribbean Cable System, PCCS, with 80 Tbit/s of capacity is there.


From New York it's business as usual, just like any other France Telecom customer. France Telecom uses Cogent's network to get to North Europe; JFK to Boston, from Boston to Liverpool, further to Amsterdam, to Hamburg and Stockholm. That's not very straightforward but hey.. In Stockholm the finnish newspaper's carrier (DNA) connects to Cogent's network. You can see the hop across the Atlantic at #9 when the round trip time increases about 90 ms.


Let's take something more interesting. How about traffic to Google from the Villa A?

traceroute to www.google.com (173.194.67.105), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 1.536 ms 1.030 ms 1.031 ms
2 net1lo-bidon.bsami113.amiens.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.3) 25.347 ms 25.587 ms 25.203 ms
3 80.10.245.253 (80.10.245.253) 24.935 ms 25.139 ms 25.159 ms
4 pos0-3-2-0-100.nyktr3.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.247.233) 75.819 ms 75.390 ms 72.142 ms
5 tengige0-3-0-6.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.151.240) 73.609 ms 73.659 ms 75.742 ms
6 tengige0-7-0-12.madtr1.madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.241.193) 172.982 ms 180.671 ms 171.615 ms
7 72.14.202.58 (72.14.202.58) 169.547 ms 169.236 ms 170.399 ms
8 209.85.252.150 (209.85.252.150) 171.562 ms
209.85.251.242 (209.85.251.242) 169.503 ms 169.680 ms
9 209.85.240.191 (209.85.240.191) 160.090 ms 160.534 ms 160.339 ms
10 209.85.248.200 (209.85.248.200) 169.613 ms
209.85.245.87 (209.85.245.87) 172.167 ms
209.85.254.62 (209.85.254.62) 171.715 ms
11 209.85.250.163 (209.85.250.163) 168.157 ms
wi-in-f105.1e100.net (173.194.67.105) 170.276 ms 171.056 ms


Again all the traffic hits St. Maarten right away and to New York. From New York we continue in France Telecom's OpenTransit network to Madrid across the Atlantic (again notice the increased rtt). In Madrid we hit a number of unnamed 209.85.x.x hops that belong to Google. 1e100 (hop #11) is Google's network (just google what google means).


What exactly happened? Google from St. Barth goes to Spain? Yes it does. When your browser asks for the IP address to Google, they see that the request comes from France Telecom's network and give you Google address that would be close to France. So when you type www.google.com on Orange ADSL connection in St Barth to your browser, you'll go through Spain to Google's network.


Again France Telecom hides the IP network and physical network quite well, there isn't a direct cable between New York and Madrid.


What about Facebook then, does it go to Spain as well? Let's see (www.facebook.com)


traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (31.13.69.176), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 1.386 ms 1.066 ms 1.001 ms
2 * net1lo-bidon.bsami113.amiens.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.3) 26.342 ms *
3 80.10.245.253 (80.10.245.253) 25.499 ms 25.549 ms 24.824 ms
4 pos0-3-0-0-100.nyktr3.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.248.2) 74.148 ms 74.197 ms 71.921 ms
5 tengige0-3-0-6.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.151.240) 72.157 ms 72.320 ms 71.157 ms
6 ae10.edge2.newyork.level3.net (4.68.70.169) 70.285 ms 70.239 ms 69.645 ms
7 vlan80.csw3.newyork1.level3.net (4.69.155.190) 77.200 ms 76.340 ms
vlan70.csw2.newyork1.level3.net (4.69.155.126) 76.824 ms
8 ae-81-81.ebr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.69.134.73) 78.320 ms
ae-91-91.ebr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.69.134.77) 76.992 ms 76.097 ms
9 ae-4-4.ebr1.newyork2.level3.net (4.69.141.18) 78.771 ms
ae-56-56.ebr2.washington12.level3.net (4.69.201.62) 77.359 ms
ae-46-46.ebr1.newyork2.level3.net (4.69.201.42) 76.528 ms
10 ae-40-40.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.201.93) 78.146 ms
ae-37-37.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.132.89) 76.507 ms
ae-40-40.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.201.93) 77.620 ms
11 ae-72-72.csw2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.150) 77.424 ms
ae-92-92.csw4.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.158) 77.637 ms
ae-72-72.csw2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.150) 78.317 ms
12 ae-4-90.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.69.149.208) 77.309 ms
ae-3-80.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.69.149.144) 78.612 ms
ae-2-70.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.69.149.80) 77.438 ms
13 facebook-in.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.53.114.46) 77.357 ms 76.071 ms 76.814 ms
14 ae2.bb01.iad1.tfbnw.net (204.15.20.120) 76.515 ms
ae1.bb02.iad1.tfbnw.net (74.119.79.204) 77.584 ms
ae3.bb02.iad1.tfbnw.net (74.119.78.60) 78.521 ms
15 ae1.dr03.ash3.tfbnw.net (204.15.21.106) 77.716 ms 79.981 ms 76.711 ms
16 po126.msw01.08.iad1.tfbnw.net (31.13.29.155) 90.485 ms 97.445 ms 77.303 ms
17 edge-star-shv-08-iad1.facebook.com (31.13.69.176) 77.032 ms 76.453 ms 76.557 ms


Again we head to New York in France Telecom's network but the traffic doesn't go to Europe but to Level3's network right there in New York.


In Level3's network (hops #6 to #13) we travel through New York to Washington DC, where Facebook is connected to Level3's network. TFBNW? The FaceBook NetWork. The "ash" and "iad" in the naming indicate that it's the rental facility Facebook has in Ashburn, VA, from DuPont Fabros Technology. You'll find Yahoo and MySpace at the same location as well. DFT actually runs at least six data centers there, ACC2 to ACC7.


We see the round trip time to hit about 70-80 ms when we go from St. Maarten to New York but it never really increases above that. We never go across the Atlantic.


One more example, just to give a picture how network connect to each other


traceroute to www.sonera.fi (194.251.244.241), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 1.633 ms 1.366 ms 1.317 ms
2 net1lo-bidon.bsami113.amiens.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.3) 25.537 ms 24.806 ms 25.499 ms
3 80.10.245.253 (80.10.245.253) 25.048 ms 25.474 ms 25.015 ms
4 pos0-3-2-0-100.nyktr3.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.247.233) 73.413 ms 71.841 ms 71.107 ms
5 tengige0-3-0-6.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.151.240) 70.931 ms 71.879 ms 71.614 ms
6 nyk-b5-link.telia.net (213.248.103.1) 70.794 ms 71.041 ms 71.843 ms
7 nyk-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.135.18) 115.617 ms 70.806 ms 70.876 ms
8 kbn-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.247.116) 173.021 ms 176.035 ms 176.330 ms
9 s-bb3-link.telia.net (213.155.136.173) 180.741 ms
s-bb3-link.telia.net (213.248.65.141) 186.364 ms
s-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.136.187) 183.061 ms
10 hls-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.64.102) 189.066 ms
hls-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.247.219) 190.591 ms
hls-b1-link.telia.net (213.155.133.73) 190.158 ms
11 tsf-ic-155157-hls-b1.c.telia.net (213.248.68.210) 194.937 ms 198.770 ms 198.351 ms
12 141.208.25.30 (141.208.25.30) 181.533 ms 181.917 ms 182.167 ms
13 finn.sonera.eu (194.251.244.241) 197.131 ms 193.603 ms 194.817 ms


The Finnish part of TeliaSonera carrier. Again all the way to New York but right in New York France Telecom connects to TeliaSonera's global network. In TeliaSonera's network we head to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and eventually Helsinki. The finnish carrier goes pretty straightforward to Northern Europe but the finnish newspaper traffic travelled all around Europe. That's the Internet.


All the big players with global networks talk to each other in different places around the globe, exchange traffic when it makes sense, and sometimes use other's network to reach the destination.


As we can see, the round trip times to everywhere are pretty normal. There isn't a single connection in the network infrastructure that is saturated with too much traffic. Using the consumer oriented SpeedTest from Ookla we can see that from the Villa A we get about 12-13 Mbit/s download speed and .9 Mbit/s upload speed from all the way from New York.


With all the layers mentioned earlier this is pretty much as fast as one can go on the ADSL line to the villa. The layers add overhead but the performance is the same to St. Maarten as it's to New York. That's enough bandwidth to watch Netflix in HD.


In summa summarum, Villa A had pretty much the same Internet access as one would get in a suburb somewhere in the US or Europe.



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Villa B near Lorient

Let's move to another perfect villa on the island. While the island is a paradise no matter where you are, the Internet isn't always the same.


The ADSL line is connected at raw speed of 23 Mbit/s downstream and 1 Mbit/s upstream. That's pretty damn good, the other end of the ADSL line must be just 1.5 km away, tops.


Let's start with Google:


traceroute to www.google.com (173.194.67.147), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 2.308 ms 2.213 ms 1.198 ms
2 net1lac-net1.bsmgt103.marigot.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.227) 649.833 ms 614.589 ms 921.493 ms
3 10.123.104.138 (10.123.104.138) 921.538 ms 678.337 ms 614.557 ms
4 pos0-3-0-2-100.nyktr2.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.254.65) 614.754 ms 920.940 ms *
5 tengige0-12-4-0.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.242.230) 838.185 ms 926.096 ms 918.487 ms
6 tengige0-7-0-12.madtr1.madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.241.193) 649.935 ms 866.802 ms 921.878 ms
...


This looks different, what's going on? Again the ADSL is from Orange (France Telecom) but for some reason the connection is terminated to a different box in St. Maarten (*. The round trip time increases to 600+ ms which is like going to the Moon, everything will be very slow. The link is simply too congested.


How can this happen if the performance from Villa A was just fine? Because of the layers. The physical layers from Lorient and St. Jean are different. The capacity to Lorient is insufficient but not to St. Jean. As they both use the same route out of the island, it's the inter-island capacity that's the issue.


On our daily drives we saw people installing fiber on the road from St. Jean to Lorient so this problem has most likely been solved by now and Villa B enjoys perfect internet connectivity today.


The local bandwidth problem can be seen when, for some reason, people are not busy surfing the internet and even Villa B got decent connectivity like villa A:


traceroute to www.google.com (173.194.67.147), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 2.075 ms 2.198 ms 1.522 ms
2 net1lac-net1.bsmgt103.marigot.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.227) 27.286 ms 18.927 ms 21.356 ms
3 10.123.104.142 (10.123.104.142) 18.406 ms 20.045 ms 21.029 ms
4 pos0-3-0-2-100.nyktr2.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.254.65) 63.710 ms 61.871 ms 102.905 ms
5 tengige0-9-1-0.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.242.228) 70.727 ms 61.532 ms 85.567 ms
6 tengige0-6-0-0.madtr1.madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.242.157) 171.786 ms 168.453 ms 168.177 ms
7 72.14.202.58 (72.14.202.58) 166.090 ms 168.070 ms 166.676 ms
8 209.85.252.150 (209.85.252.150) 173.875 ms 167.266 ms 174.072 ms
..


The rest is the same as for Villa A, both use France Telecom's Orange. Google goes to Europe, Facebook goes to Virginia.


*) If one reads carefully, the ADSL from Villa A looked like it was connected to the village of Amiens in mainland France but the IP address (193.253.160.3) is almost the same as for this box in Marigot. They've probably recycled the IP network from Amiens and forgot to update all the names. It happens, humans..
 
Hotel X near Lorient

Unfortunately I never checked the ADSL speed for this hotel. Most likely similar to villa B due to the location.


However the results for traffic are something very different. Let's start with Google:


traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.196.103), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 * 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.698 ms 1.574 ms
2 1.232.112.74.dyn-ip.domaccess.com (74.112.232.1) 44.498 ms 41.970 ms 43.783 ms
3 209.46.117.64.static-ip.domaccess.com (64.117.46.209) 46.567 ms 45.896 ms 45.206 ms
4 66.129.175.1 (66.129.175.1) 51.374 ms 50.183 ms 46.201 ms
5 ae3-208.mia10.ip4.tinet.net (77.67.79.41) 96.785 ms 96.529 ms 96.910 ms
6 72.14.210.140 (72.14.210.140) 75.915 ms 75.766 ms 77.198 ms
7 209.85.253.120 (209.85.253.120) 90.473 ms
209.85.253.116 (209.85.253.116) 92.526 ms 76.851 ms
8 209.85.252.96 (209.85.252.96) 94.496 ms
209.85.252.98 (209.85.252.98) 92.460 ms 93.037 ms
9 209.85.248.31 (209.85.248.31) 91.443 ms
209.85.243.254 (209.85.243.254) 87.531 ms 89.123 ms
10 * * *
11 yk-in-f103.1e100.net (74.125.196.103) 91.568 ms 87.646 ms 92.955 ms


Instead of Orange the hotel has an ADSL connection from Dauphin Telecom. Dauphin is further connected to PREPA Networks in Puerto Rico (hop #4), from there the traffic to Facebook flows to Miami on GTT's network where Google is connected to (209.85.x.x networks).


With Facebook the route looks like:


traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (31.13.73.145), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.825 ms 3.329 ms 1.508 ms
2 1.232.112.74.dyn-ip.domaccess.com (74.112.232.1) 43.245 ms 43.687 ms 41.985 ms
3 209.46.117.64.static-ip.domaccess.com (64.117.46.209) 41.969 ms 43.781 ms 46.629 ms
4 66.129.175.1 (66.129.175.1) 54.368 ms 46.030 ms 48.456 ms
5 ae3-208.mia10.ip4.tinet.net (77.67.79.41) 101.825 ms 154.604 ms 97.707 ms
6 as3356.mia10.ip4.tinet.net (199.229.229.174) 95.904 ms 96.351 ms 95.094 ms
7 4.59.242.22 (4.59.242.22) 77.531 ms 75.789 ms 75.511 ms
8 po126.msw01.10.mia1.tfbnw.net (74.119.76.141) 78.093 ms 75.922 ms 75.465 ms
9 edge-star-shv-10-mia1.facebook.com (31.13.73.145) 78.672 ms 77.241 ms 76.040 ms


Again we head to PREPA Networks in Puerto Rico. Orange (FT) was relying on their own network infrastructure all the way to New York and further but Dauphin Telecom seems to buy all their connectivity from PREPA. PREPA seems to be well connected to GTT, perhaps buying all their transit from them.


Traffic to Facebook enters from Puerto Rico to Miami and further straight to Facebook's own network.


What about Dauphin's global traffic then:


traceroute to www.elisa.fi (195.197.95.175), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 2.001 ms 1.582 ms 1.568 ms
2 1.232.112.74.dyn-ip.domaccess.com (74.112.232.1) 54.066 ms 54.104 ms *
3 209.46.117.64.static-ip.domaccess.com (64.117.46.209) 66.917 ms 50.202 ms 44.258 ms
4 66.129.175.1 (66.129.175.1) 63.323 ms 53.709 ms 46.618 ms
5 ae3-208.mia10.ip4.tinet.net (77.67.79.41) 101.097 ms 98.662 ms 96.506 ms
6 xe-8-2-0.stk10.ip4.tinet.net (89.149.182.113) 303.501 ms 360.685 ms 409.244 ms
7 elisa-gw.ip4.tinet.net (141.136.97.154) 307.206 ms 307.433 ms 307.322 ms
8 ae0-10.bbr2.hel1.fi.eunetip.net (213.192.191.73) 306.881 ms 306.836 ms 307.816 ms
9 213.192.184.110 (213.192.184.110) 254.891 ms 306.763 ms 307.455 ms
10 ae1.helpa-gw1.fi.elisa.net (139.97.6.242) 307.094 ms 409.033 ms 307.184 ms
11 139.97.22.250 (139.97.22.250) 306.949 ms 306.658 ms 307.157 ms
12 195.197.95.175 (195.197.95.175) 307.355 ms 306.828 ms 307.049 ms


Again to PREPA in Puerto Rico and further to GTT's network in Miami. This pretty much says that GTT is the primary route for all the traffic from Dauphin. GTT has a "direct" link from Miami to Stockholm (remember the layers) where the finnish carrier is connected to them. As a founder I'm happy to see EUnet still active in the naming of routers :)


We did experience a increased round trip times on the first links for Dauphin Telecom as well in Lorient but nowhere as bad as Orange was. Hopefully the new fiber to Lorient will be shared by Orange and Dauphin.
 
Villa C near Colombier

Unfortunately I never checked the ADSL speed in this villa. Most likely slightly slower than the other two as the location is more distant.


However rest of the data was very similar to the other two Orange connected villas:


traceroute to www.google.com (173.194.66.105), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 2.432 ms 2.595 ms 1.962 ms
2 net1lac-net1.bsmgt103.marigot.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.227) 20.991 ms 21.064 ms 23.381 ms
3 10.123.104.202 (10.123.104.202) 20.790 ms 19.797 ms 19.699 ms
4 81.52.186.149 (81.52.186.149) 73.997 ms 65.525 ms 58.719 ms
5 tengige0-1-4-0.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.243.198) 61.675 ms 59.943 ms 59.793 ms
6 tengige0-7-0-12.madtr1.madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.241.193) 159.343 ms 160.489 ms 158.892 ms
7 72.14.202.58 (72.14.202.58) 163.257 ms 160.404 ms 194.240 ms
8 209.85.251.242 (209.85.251.242) 172.282 ms 160.274 ms
209.85.252.150 (209.85.252.150) 157.370 ms


Looks pretty much the same. However the round trip to hop #2 in Marigot never experienced the same as near Lorient so either Colombier has already fiber installed, or there isn't as much traffic to start with.

This stay was different month than A and B, and for Facebook a different IP address received that resulted quite a different path for the traffic:


traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (31.13.71.144), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 2.838 ms 2.094 ms 2.004 ms
2 net1lac-net1.bsmgt103.marigot.francetelecom.net (193.253.160.227) 22.101 ms 20.825 ms 21.193 ms
3 10.123.104.206 (10.123.104.206) 21.095 ms 21.373 ms 20.503 ms
4 81.52.186.149 (81.52.186.149) 59.542 ms 59.361 ms 58.934 ms
5 tengige0-1-4-0.nyktr1.newyork.opentransit.net (193.251.243.198) 62.645 ms 66.890 ms 65.015 ms
6 verio-6.gw.opentransit.net (193.251.249.46) 63.202 ms 66.227 ms 63.803 ms
7 ae-2.ua.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.195.58) 81.280 ms 61.121 ms 60.984 ms
8 po126.msw01.10.lga1.tfbnw.net (204.15.21.73) 59.264 ms 59.289 ms 59.864 ms
9 edge-star-shv-10-lga1.facebook.com (31.13.71.144) 59.979 ms 61.542 ms 58.361 ms


All the way to New York but in New York France Telecom's OpenTransit connects to Japanese NTT's network, which is actually former Verio that was sold to NTT 15 years ago.


Facebook connects to NTT's network right there in New York. Perhaps Facebook has terminated their deal with Verio/NTT or simply changed their policy to use Level3 for France Telecom instead. It's quite odd really considering that Facebook is already at New York but that's how traffic policies work, you don't always connect at the most obvious places. From engineering point of view New York and Washington are pretty much the same, a few hundred miles here and there won't hurt your Facebook user. If you're financial company doing high speed stock trading, you care about every fraction of ms and you wish there was something faster than light.


Using the Ookla's SpeedTest one could measure about 10 Mbit/s download and 0.9 Mbit/s upload -- all the way to New York. This would indicate raw ADSL speed slightly less than Villa A.
 
Digicel's 3G mobile phone

Something different, what about using the SIM card on your phone, as a WiFi hotspot? Digicel's SIM card in St. Jean gives the following route for Facebook:


traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (31.13.69.80), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.43.1 (192.168.43.1) 9.699 ms 2.164 ms 2.007 ms
2 172.24.15.146 (172.24.15.146) 110.755 ms 79.985 ms 79.947 ms
3 172.24.15.145 (172.24.15.145) 119.909 ms 78.642 ms 75.984 ms
4 172.24.17.4 (172.24.17.4) 102.709 ms 81.068 ms 74.800 ms
5 172.24.17.34 (172.24.17.34) 113.848 ms 76.816 ms 74.548 ms
6 172.24.17.62 (172.24.17.62) 108.057 ms 85.408 ms 72.694 ms
7 172.24.17.17 (172.24.17.17) 113.151 ms 79.162 ms 80.150 ms
8 94.198.176.18 (94.198.176.18) 103.009 ms 73.384 ms 82.009 ms
9 172.24.31.234 (172.24.31.234) 159.409 ms 138.306 ms 151.314 ms
10 66.249.144.130 (66.249.144.130) 81.859 ms 128.492 ms 80.514 ms
11 66.249.144.129 (66.249.144.129) 238.695 ms 129.300 ms 181.957 ms
12 * ix-0-2-1-0.tcore1.nyy-new-york.as6453.net (216.6.90.1) 421.526 ms 205.175 ms
13 if-5-5.tcore1.nto-new-york.as6453.net (216.6.90.6) 203.980 ms 122.673 ms 120.015 ms
14 ae9.edge1.newyork.level3.net (4.68.62.185) 371.425 ms 178.460 ms 129.973 ms
15 vlan51.ebr1.newyork2.level3.net (4.69.138.222) 175.841 ms 140.281 ms 186.100 ms
16 ae-40-40.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.201.93) 137.178 ms
ae-37-37.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.132.89) 294.098 ms
ae-39-39.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.201.89) 175.769 ms
17 ae-92-92.csw4.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.158) 175.875 ms
ae-82-82.csw3.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.154) 177.188 ms
ae-92-92.csw4.washington1.level3.net (4.69.134.158) 362.987 ms
18 ae-3-80.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.69.149.144) 190.415 ms 272.128 ms
ae-1-60.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.69.149.16) 340.734 ms
19 facebook-in.edge2.washington4.level3.net (4.53.114.46) 121.053 ms 136.520 ms 457.404 ms
20 be2.bb01.iad3.tfbnw.net (173.252.65.30) 409.361 ms 138.856 ms 129.089 ms
21 ae51.dr01.ash3.tfbnw.net (173.252.64.201) 181.359 ms 134.797 ms 196.459 ms
22 po126.msw01.10.iad1.tfbnw.net (31.13.29.171) 128.000 ms 133.631 ms 182.942 ms
23 edge-star-shv-10-iad1.facebook.com (31.13.69.80) 122.895 ms 136.724 ms 189.342 ms


Plenty of steps inside the Digicel network (hops up to #11) before arriving to New York in "AS6453". What is this strange AS6453? The AS (Autonymous System) and the number are technical terms for internet routing at larger scale, and this network is Indian Tata Communications. What's Tata doing in New York, don't they make those super cheap cars in India? They do, but they also own former Teleglobe.


From Tata's network in New York the traffic heads to Level3's network and further down to Washington DC as with Orange (FT).


Google looks pretty much the same:


traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.228.83), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.43.1 (192.168.43.1) 2.972 ms 2.251 ms 2.330 ms
2 172.24.15.146 (172.24.15.146) 397.736 ms 409.156 ms 84.148 ms
3 172.24.15.145 (172.24.15.145) 75.521 ms 73.958 ms 97.288 ms
4 172.24.17.4 (172.24.17.4) 72.670 ms 76.833 ms 72.229 ms
5 172.24.17.34 (172.24.17.34) 70.132 ms 76.834 ms 72.601 ms
6 172.24.17.62 (172.24.17.62) 77.736 ms 85.284 ms 76.455 ms
7 172.24.17.17 (172.24.17.17) 83.566 ms 91.102 ms 84.577 ms
8 94.198.176.18 (94.198.176.18) 69.528 ms 69.915 ms 69.866 ms
9 172.24.0.81 (172.24.0.81) 120.171 ms 127.219 ms 117.635 ms
10 66.249.144.130 (66.249.144.130) 76.781 ms 74.937 ms 77.538 ms
11 66.249.144.129 (66.249.144.129) 120.559 ms 123.200 ms 118.136 ms
12 ix-0-2-1-0.tcore1.nyy-new-york.as6453.net (216.6.90.1) 117.655 ms 124.382 ms 119.622 ms
13 if-5-5.tcore1.nto-new-york.as6453.net (216.6.90.6) 127.781 ms 128.577 ms *
14 63.243.128.122 (63.243.128.122) 1532.360 ms 433.719 ms 409.589 ms
15 74.125.52.6 (74.125.52.6) 409.565 ms 409.527 ms 409.347 ms
16 209.85.248.180 (209.85.248.180) 409.347 ms
209.85.248.178 (209.85.248.178) 409.210 ms 409.260 ms
17 209.85.252.250 (209.85.252.250) 409.387 ms
209.85.252.242 (209.85.252.242) 614.113 ms
209.85.252.250 (209.85.252.250) 157.623 ms
18 209.85.249.11 (209.85.249.11) 140.339 ms 128.944 ms
72.14.239.93 (72.14.239.93) 139.450 ms
19 72.14.236.99 (72.14.236.99) 136.496 ms 136.075 ms
72.14.236.149 (72.14.236.149) 133.190 ms
20 72.14.238.247 (72.14.238.247) 136.534 ms 134.312 ms 133.971 ms
21 iad23s07-in-f19.1e100.net (74.125.228.83) 133.868 ms 136.200 ms 129.091 ms


Again hopping around the Dauphin's network towards New York where Tata talks directly with Google.


The last hop #21 probably tells us that we'll find Google leasing space in Ashburn, VA, as well.


The bandwidth itself was nothing to write home about, about 350 kbit/s up- and downstream. The phone itself was indicating a DC-HSPA+ connection but it didn't look like it.
 
Just for comparison, how about Antigua?

I did similar check in our hotel in Antigua with the following results:


traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (66.220.158.19), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1) 6.447 ms 5.374 ms 6.339 ms
2 76.76.160.129 (76.76.160.129) 7.830 ms 7.012 ms 6.757 ms
3 209.59.96.126 (209.59.96.126) 6.816 ms 6.799 ms 6.866 ms
4 69.57.250.73 (69.57.250.73) 7.729 ms 7.136 ms 6.987 ms
5 209.59.68.86 (209.59.68.86) 49.164 ms 48.237 ms 49.051 ms
6 206.126.115.45 (206.126.115.45) 47.650 ms 48.001 ms 47.290 ms
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 ae13.bb03.frc1.tfbnw.net (31.13.31.249) 181.386 ms 717.182 ms 511.839 ms
10 ae60.dr04.frc3.tfbnw.net (74.119.79.29) 512.015 ms
ae3.dr03.frc3.tfbnw.net (31.13.28.8) 117.155 ms
ae61.dr02.frc3.tfbnw.net (173.252.64.63) 307.001 ms
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 edge-star-shv-07-frc3.facebook.com (66.220.158.19) 406.604 ms 443.297 ms 394.670 ms


A bit more difficult to decode, I'm afraid? Not really. Antigua is bigger island than St. Barth so the ADSL layer terminated right away. Hop #2 tells that the connectivity is from Cable & Wireless in Antigua, and as there isn't increased round trip time we are actually talking about fiber connectivity, not ADSL. pretty good.


Hop #3 to #5 are all part of Cable & Wireless in Antigua. The increased round trip time between #4 and #5 indicate congestion on that particular point in the network, perhaps inter-island.


Hop #6 belongs to Brazilian GlobeNet. No, Antigua isn't connected Brazil :) Antigua is connected to the same GCN, Global Caribbean Network, as St. Barth. There's also the older ECFS, East Caribbean Fiber System. Both GCN and ECFS connect to Trinidad and Tobago when they go southwards. So what's the deal with Brazil then? There are actually quite a few cables that go to Brazil, including South American Crossing that connects St. Croix among other places to Fortazela in Brazil. Fortazela is a major concentration for submarine cables, just like Puerto Rico.


From GlobeNet we enter The FaceBook Network so where exactly did we go? The answer is in the "FRC", which is Forest City. Facebook has a big data center in Forest City, New Jersey. GlobeNet has a cable in the Caribbean that lands in New Jersey but it's unclear from the data where C&W might be connecting to it.


Let's give Google a try from Cable & Wireless in Antigua:


traceroute to www.google.com (173.194.38.144), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1) 5.927 ms 5.769 ms 5.596 ms
2 76.76.160.129 (76.76.160.129) 530.754 ms 659.511 ms 614.316 ms
3 209.59.96.126 (209.59.96.126) 339.419 ms 376.933 ms 614.142 ms
4 * 69.57.250.73 (69.57.250.73) 425.737 ms 409.147 ms
5 209.59.68.86 (209.59.68.86) 410.143 ms 408.925 ms 409.682 ms
6 72.51.68.14 (72.51.68.14) 196.903 ms 481.036 ms 376.308 ms
7 209.85.248.180 (209.85.248.180) 306.799 ms
209.85.248.178 (209.85.248.178) 387.066 ms *
8 72.14.236.206 (72.14.236.206) 630.323 ms
209.85.252.242 (209.85.252.242) 110.195 ms 48.273 ms
9 209.85.249.11 (209.85.249.11) 59.044 ms 54.587 ms 54.506 ms
10 72.14.232.71 (72.14.232.71) 69.026 ms 69.351 ms 69.337 ms
11 209.85.241.43 (209.85.241.43) 126.826 ms 511.689 ms 511.869 ms
12 209.85.250.126 (209.85.250.126) 614.851 ms 113.069 ms
209.85.240.228 (209.85.240.228) 500.455 ms
13 72.14.233.165 (72.14.233.165) 361.930 ms
72.14.238.131 (72.14.238.131) 274.018 ms 603.755 ms
14 209.85.250.228 (209.85.250.228) 921.208 ms 580.962 ms 408.811 ms
15 66.249.94.93 (66.249.94.93) 410.290 ms 818.821 ms 818.572 ms
16 72.14.233.79 (72.14.233.79) 819.672 ms 819.405 ms 716.660 ms
17 sin04s01-in-f16.1e100.net (173.194.38.144) 818.424 ms 537.562 ms 554.116 ms


Pretty messy, eh? Again a lot of congestion in the C&W Antigua network.


With just the IP networks the actual topology is quite hidden but at least we can check that hops #7 to #17 actually belong to Google, pretty long way inside Google's infrastructure.


Hop #6 is registered for Cable & Wireless in Barbados but it could be elsewhere. What the traceroute does show is that Google and C&W talk to each other directly, perhaps quite close and the traffic goes mostly inside Google's own network.
 
And if someone happened to read all the way down here, here's the executive summary:

The connectivity to the islands in generally pretty good.

The copper distances for the ADSL are decent (St. Jean, Lorient, Colombier) and give quite comfortable 10-20 Mbit/s download bandwidth.

The bottleneck today is the connectivity within the island but work seems to be underway to fix it. Hopefully this will also make it possible to get fiber straight to villas in the future.

If Google thinks you're in France, don't be surprised. That also means that your Google traffic goes all the way to Europe.

As the results from Antigua show, the situation in different islands is very different. St. Maarten is probably very similar to St. Barth due to the location and the same carriers, but Anguilla might have totally different connectivity to St. Maarten.

Mobile data on Digicel isn't good.
 
Have I mentioned how grateful I am to have Phil in my electronic life as well as my real life...
 
Have I mentioned how grateful I am to have Phil in my electronic life as well as my real life...

He explained everything to you? :) Well done!

I know what a chef must feel when he/she gets crappy food and knows why the perfect ingredients were spoiled. Happens with the Internet all the time to me :)
 
Phil just comes to my rescue every time I screw up or think I broke the computer. The most dreaded words in our house are OOPS and OH NO!
 
LOL.......you missed my point

the woman on Jost was apologizing in advance for "no cell service and very slow Internet"

i just laughed and said.....well we don't go on vacation with a computer or a phone so I guess that works out real well for everyone.....

she just laughed and told us in that case the island is going to work out very well for us.....:eagerness:

and i I have a bunch of 10 to 12 year olds to coach me on my tech issues.....
 
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