Did a wormhole open to the US from China?

[sthubbar]

There has been much talk about the poor network performance from within Mainland China to the outside world and I have been a contributor to these rumblings. I usually keep a constant ping running to 8.8.8.8 (an easy to remember Google server IP) just to have a general idea of the round-trip time and packet loss from my connection to the US.

On good days, this is usually around 240ms or so. 140ms would be an exceptional day.

I'm sitting here on a public wi-fi connection and happened to check the status and I couldn't believe my eyes, 42ms!! Is that even physically possible?

If my calculations are accurate that would be about 12,591 kilometers at the speed of light. The flight distance between Beijing and San Francisco is 9,525 kilometers. I would assume network cables would not be as straight as air distance, plus should factor in network device delay.

A traceroute looks like the packets are actually going all the way to the US, doesn't look like something is intercepting in the middle and responding.

Probably a more appropriate discussion for a network experts board, though maybe imron would find it interesting.

Here's a traceroute

>tracert -d 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to 8.8.8.8 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 195 ms 127 ms 30 ms 117.128.184.193

2 22 ms 7 ms 8 ms 117.130.192.132

3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms 117.128.8.193

4 21 ms 13 ms 6 ms 221.130.39.9

5 6 ms 4 ms 5 ms 211.136.94.153

6 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms 221.179.171.45

7 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms 221.179.171.5

8 * 16 ms * 211.136.7.173

9 83 ms 37 ms 39 ms 211.136.2.26

10 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms 221.176.18.114

11 37 ms 36 ms 37 ms 221.176.24.138

12 42 ms 42 ms 63 ms 211.136.1.97

13 61 ms 51 ms 53 ms 72.14.214.25

14 49 ms 72 ms 81 ms 209.85.241.56

15 122 ms 108 ms 128 ms 216.239.43.17

16 * * 76 ms 216.239.48.230

17 43 ms 47 ms 43 ms 8.8.8.8

Trace complete.

[imron]

Don't post about it on the forums! The censors will read about it, and shut it down!!!!!!!!1!!!

[roddy]

Plus you've forgotten that c is the speed of light in a vacuum, not fiber.

[m000gle]

Given that 8.8.8.8 is one of the Google Public DNS IP addresses, it is entirely possible that when you ping it, it pings the server which is located closest to your geographic location, and not necessarily the one in the U.S. My guess is its located in Hong Kong. The fact the traceroute goes through the U.S., though, does seem to run counter to this.

It seems as if pinging any (accessible) Google IP from here ends up in the ~40ms range, but pinging any other IP in North America is in the ~250ms range, which is much more normal. The one exception is google.cn, which gives me ~2ms ping ^_^

[jbradfor]

I think line 15 of the output is your answer. The 216.x.x.x address range is the first time your trace has reached google, and if you look at the timing, it's about 120 ns, so it's quite likely it's in USA. Then something gets a bit weird for 216.239.48.230 (still google, but notice your first two ping packets were dropped), and then when you reach 8.8.8.8, I think it's been redirected to somewhere within Asia.

[sthubbar]

Plus you've forgotten that c is the speed of light in a vacuum, not fiber.

Yes, so it would be even a shorter possible distance.

I think it's been redirected to somewhere within Asia.

Yes, very well could be. Now at home I'm seeing ~500ms RTT to the same IP.

Go figure.

[imron]

I warned you!!!!1!!!

[gato]

Rookie mistake!

[sthubbar]

I guess this is a persistent wormhole. I have returned to the location of the first sighting and it still exists sporadically. If you care to check it out for yourself, go to Lishui Qiao, Longde Shopping Center Starbucks in Beijing.

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=206ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=123ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=108ms TTL=48

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=140ms TTL=48

Haven't seen this anywhere else in Beijing or any other city that I've checked in China.

[muirm]

When the latency is super low can you still use 8.8.8.8 to resolve hostnames that are blocked on normal China DNS servers?

[gato]

No wormhole unless you can watch Youtube without a proxy. Can you?

[roddy]

Lishui Qiao, Longde Shopping Center Starbucks in Beijing.

There has to be some perk to being in a shopping mall Starbucks outside the fifth ring road. Guess low ping times for Google's DNS servers are as good as any.