Comments on: The mysteries of Internet routing

By: Patrick Vande Walle

Patrick Vande Walle — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:49:08 +0000

Although this is an old post, it is still very much true. From the list you mention, several major ISPs are not peering in Luxembourg, altough they have local customers: Verizon, France Télécom, British Telecom, Telenet and Altice/Coditel. I certainly miss some others.

The fact there are fibers from Luxembourg to major IXPs in Frankfurt and Amsterdam does not mean that the Luxembourg ISPs sign peering agreements with other ISPs. See the lists at https://www.ams-ix.net/connected/ and http://www.decix.net/info/connected.html. The only Luxembourg ISP peering in Frankfurt is P&T.

This year’s traceroute is a bit better. From Luxembourg-Kirchberg to another host at Luxembourg-Kirchberg:

We go from Luxembourg, to Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Brussels and finally Luxembourg.

traceroute to europa.eu (147.67.243.25), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 gate-isoc.rest.restena.lu (158.64.14.85) 0.964 ms 1.107 ms 1.380 ms
2 gate-1-v34.rest.restena.lu (158.64.16.57) 0.509 ms 0.585 ms 0.625 ms
3 gate-2-v26.bce.restena.lu (158.64.16.217) 2.688 ms 2.968 ms 3.143 ms
4 gate-1-v33.bce.restena.lu (158.64.16.37) 0.529 ms 0.576 ms 0.742 ms
5 restena.rt1.lux.lu.geant2.net (62.40.124.149) 0.514 ms 0.496 ms 0.669 ms
6 so-1-3-0.rt1.fra.de.geant2.net (62.40.112.53) 5.285 ms 5.441 ms 5.366 ms
7 ffm-b2-pos10-2.telia.net (213.248.77.89) 5.650 ms 5.773 ms 5.652 ms
8 ffm-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.249.85) 5.703 ms 5.755 ms ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.251.150) 5.731 ms
9 ffm-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.254.41) 5.854 ms ffm-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.137) 5.839 ms ffm-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.141) 6.012 ms
10 ixp2.de-fra.eu.ignite.net (80.81.193.84) 7.410 ms 7.373 ms 7.367 ms
11 t2c1-ge12-0-0.de-fra.eu.bt.net (166.49.172.97) 6.841 ms 6.818 ms 6.778 ms
12 t2c1-p2-0.de-dus.eu.bt.net (166.49.195.153) 10.659 ms 10.638 ms 10.606 ms
13 t2c1-p4-0.nl-ams2.eu.bt.net (166.49.195.45) 23.848 ms 23.125 ms 22.886 ms
14 t2c2-p9-1.be-bru.eu.bt.net (166.49.164.189) 24.377 ms 24.325 ms 24.642 ms
15 t2a2-ge0-0.be-bru.eu.bt.net (166.49.190.18) 25.320 ms 25.408 ms 25.394 ms
16 166-49-133-114.eu.bt.net (166.49.133.114) 22.483 ms 22.438 ms 22.434 ms
17 212.8.176.126 (212.8.176.126) 29.483 ms 29.113 ms *

By: lka

lka — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:36:48 +0000

I don’t know how you get these strange results, but they are wrong. There are direct IP connectivities within Luxembourg.

All major ISP’s in Luxembourg are connected to the LIX (Luxembourg Internet Exchange).

Look under:

: http://www.restena.lu/restena/en/EN-LIXMembers.html
You have to use the cmd command line to get correct answers.

For exemple: If you enter in the command line:
tracert http://www.isoc.lu,

you get a direct answer without passing via other countries.

Luxembourg is also directly connected to the largest Internet Exchange in the world, like AMS-IX, DE-CIX, LINX, etc.

By: Patrick Vande Walle

Patrick Vande Walle — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:28:39 +0000

Peering between ISPs means they exchange traffic without any settlement. One of the conditions is that the amount of traffic should be roughly similar in both directions. Verizon is the most important Internet carrier in the world. Most of the other ISPs peering at the LIX are small in comparision. For those smaller ISPs wishing to peer with a large one, large carriers like Verizon usually ask for a financial settlement, based on the amount of traffic. See Wikipedia for a longer explanation.

By: Guillaume Rischard

Guillaume Rischard — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:38:57 +0000

We should name the ISPs who don’t peer at the LIX on the ISOC wiki.

Can you explain what they mean by a very uneven peering, and tell us what you think of their explanation?