[plug] peered or unpeered: that is the question

[Craig Foster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au] On
> Behalf Of Gavin Chester
> Sent: Tuesday, 4 March 2008 9:39 AM
> To: plug
> Subject: [plug] peered or unpeered: that is the question
> 
> Regular readers of this list with elephantine memories may recall my
> previous missives wherein I wrote of finally convincing telstra that
> yes, my rural line _is_ good enough so they should supply me with
> adsl :-/ So, I'm fairly new to broadband this late in the game.

Welcome to the party!

> With the novelty of it all, I have been on a download-fest and have
> come
> up against the problem of: when is peered traffic NOT peered trafic?
My
> provider is amnet and I used a mirror at pacific.net.au, who are
> members
> of waix. I even googled to check that other users found them to be a
> peered source of traffic. I even did a traceroute and packets came
> through peered hosts. Speed was blinding-fast, too. All good you might
> think :-/

Ahh, return routes...

Your traffic to Pacific does go through WAIX however the traffic back
(your downloads) may go through whatever link pacific's servers think is
best.
Pacific's "WAIX" link is notorious for routing back as non-WAIX traffic,
something that comes up once a month on the Whingepool Amnet forum :P

Check with Pacific's Looking Glass tool to see how it'd be routed
back...
http://mrtg.pacific.net.au/zip-lg.html
 
> Well, in two days I've downloaded 8.5gb, it seems. Quota is 10gb,
> unpeered. Trouble is, ALL is showing in unpeered allocation. Long call
> to amnet follows. "Sorry, we can't guarantee traffic sources, even if
> they are peered mirrors". WTF? All my quota nearly gone with balance
of
> month remaining and I did everything possible to avoid just this
> situation. Sympathetic mid-level tech only said I just have to take
pot
> luck on peering (do small sample download first :-/) and/or only use
> uwa
> or iinet mirrors in Perth to guarantee peered waix traffic.

ISPs that are HQ'd in Perth are likely to be pushing all they can
through WAIX cos it's cheap(er*).
Besides, debian repositories are in Perth... what else do you need? :P
I've heard people set their DNS to iiNet's to increase the likelihood
Microsoft Update & Downloads, iTunes & Previews, Adobe downloads, ABC
VODcasts all end up coming through the iiNet/Akamai mirrors.
Personally, in *really* dire circumstances, I'll set my firewall to only
allow torrent traffic from WA ISPs, and once it's finished downloading,
reset it to allow all internet traffic (since uploads are still free)
 
> Is this really the bottom line? grrr.

Yes, and I feel your pain...

> Gavin
> 


CraigF.

More from WestNet users (WAIX and PIPE)
http://whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/645772.html
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/510260.html