General : Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion

[InsaneNutter]

Originally Posted by Synthetic

It's cropped up on reddit, enabling DoH / DoT has sorted it there as well.

Yup, I can confirm the iPlayer now works fine with DoT enabled. No issues streaming anything.

[cje85]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

This is what I get using Google's DNS



Pretty slick.

Attachment 29103

My Google DNS result is virtually the same as above, but 1.1.1.1 takes a longer route via Paris:

tracert a1792.w60.akamai.net

Tracing route to a1792.w60.akamai.net [2.22.22.210]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms RT-AC86U-7358 [192.168.1.1]
2 10 ms 11 ms 11 ms 10.53.39.9
3 15 ms 18 ms 11 ms pres-core-2b-xe-714-0.network.virginmedia.net [80.0.160.153]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 28 ms 97 ms 108 ms 86.85-254-62.static.virginmediabusiness.co.uk [62.254.85.86]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 23 ms 32 ms 25 ms be2868.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.57.153]
8 113 ms 33 ms 29 ms be12497.ccr41.par01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.56.130]
9 26 ms 30 ms 28 ms be3183.ccr31.par04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.38.66]
10 27 ms 28 ms 25 ms be3169.agr21.par04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.37.238]
11 29 ms 30 ms 25 ms akamai.demarc.cogentco.com [149.11.114.234]
12 30 ms 33 ms 36 ms a2-22-22-210.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [2.22.22.210]

I can see the attraction of Cloudflare DNS for those who don't use VM DNS and dislike Google but some of the routing could be better.

[Robertus]

So I’m still using VMs DNS. If I set my router to my NAS (which is synology/docker/adguard now) my internet dies. Wondering if it was due to running pihole in docker (have since deleted the container) and a port conflict, however the instance is set to use my nas ip.

[General Maximus]

why don't you tell your router to use Google dns? (or cloudfare/whatever your preference is)

[Robertus]

Because as per synthetics evidence, changing dns provider kills quality on things like Nowtv/btsport. I haven’t tried google dns but I think synthetic had.

[Synthetic]

Yeah it doesnt matter which you use if you dont have DOH/DoT

[Robertus]

Synthetic - have you managed to fully resolve the issue using DoT or DoH for both BT and Now?

[Synthetic]

Originally Posted by Robertus

Synthetic - have you managed to fully resolve the issue using DoT or DoH for both BT and Now?

Now is working fine but BT I can only resolve by adding static DNS, I'm not sure if my unbound is sending me to a dodgy cache or what

[Robertus]

So when I had adguard running, I set my windows pc to my DNS server - however I still experienced issues with now and bt. Bit frustrating really. I’ll try again when I can get my router/dns server playing nicely.

[tweetiepooh]

I can't see how "pure" DNS would affect routing as all it does is translate name to IP (and back maybe). If different DNS's resolve differently that may affect things.


You could try the tracepath command which works a little bit differently and doesn't need root privileges on UNIX/LINUX. This can show if packets are fragmented and highlight asymmetric routing though the latter isn't always the problem it used to be.

[Robertus]

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

I can't see how "pure" DNS would affect routing as all it does is translate name to IP (and back maybe). If different DNS's resolve differently that may affect things.


You could try the tracepath command which works a little bit differently and doesn't need root privileges on UNIX/LINUX. This can show if packets are fragmented and highlight asymmetric routing though the latter isn't always the problem it used to be.

Whatever the case, using cloudflare kills nowtv/btsport for me.

BT sport ultimate - constant buffering and unwatchable

BT SPORT HD - really bad quality with buffering, just less than ultimate

Nowtv - buffering and really poor quality

As soon as I revert to VM dns it’s fine

[Synthetic]

Not the best solution but do an nslookup / dig using the virgin servers, then set a static dns in your pihole for that akamai domain so when you're using CF/google, your pihole will send you to the ones you use when you're using the virgin DNS

Or i guess use virgin's DNS if you're not having any trouble with them

[fizzyade]

I've noticed a bit of latency recently, although I've not correlated it to any particular site or route, and I was, unfortunately, dealing with another issue on my MBP that saw seeing my downloads capped to 20Mbit/s, I stumbled across the solution for that by accident though.

I just ran a trace to the akamai server that was mentioned in this thread.



MOD EDIT - too large image removed and replaced with smaller image.

[Synthetic]

So if i use google DNS it sends me to the virgin cache, and everything appear to works as it should now, i wonder if virgin have fixed their mess..

1.1.1.1 still sends me via cogento though

[General Maximus]

I dont watch any terrestrial tv apart from Wimbledon every year. Yesterday i had the tennis going on my tvs, tablet and phone simultaneously using iplayer and google dns and didnt have any problems.