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I recently switched to Verizon FiOS and am experiencing some issues with my internet. I tested my connection speed at dslreports and received the report stating that I had 25mbps for both upload and download speeds. Despite this, websites like Facebook and YouTube have issues loading. The only way I can describe the issue is that the websites will either not load at all or load very fast.

For example, if I attempt to go to Facebook, it will hang at Connected to www.facebook.com... and never load. I'll have to attempt the page request again before it will actually do anything.

Similarly with YouTube, some videos will load extremely slowly at 360p while others will load extremely fast at 1080p.

Possibly related, I experience large amounts of lag in video games, despite having relatively low ping.

This problem persists across my entire network, affecting any other computers connected via the FiOS router. It was never a problem I experienced with Charter cable, before switching to FiOS a couple weeks ago. With Charter, I had slower download/upload speeds (25/2), yet it seemed more reliable.

Some background info:

  • Computer: Alienware M17x
  • OS: Windows 7 64bit
  • DNS: OpenDNS

This link may be of a related issue: http://forums.verizon.com/t5/FiOS-Internet/google-youtube-slow-over-fios-definitely-verizon-s-fault/td-p/316367

EDIT: Here are some tracert results:

Tracing route to facebook.com [69.63.189.16]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1     1 ms    <1 ms     2 ms  192.168.1.1
2     4 ms     5 ms     4 ms  L100.LSANCA-VFTTP-127.verizon-gni.net [173.51.202.1]
3     8 ms     6 ms     7 ms  G0-9-1-5.LSANCA-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [130.81.138.96]
4    18 ms    30 ms     7 ms  so-4-1-0-0.LAX01-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.151.246]
5    13 ms     6 ms     7 ms  0.so-1-2-0.XL3.LAX15.ALTER.NET [152.63.10.133]
6     8 ms     7 ms     8 ms  0.ae3.BR3.LAX15.ALTER.NET [152.63.113.185]
7     9 ms     9 ms     9 ms  4.68.63.245
8     7 ms     7 ms     9 ms  vlan80.csw3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.144.190]
9     8 ms     8 ms     8 ms  ae-83-83.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.137.41]
10    84 ms    87 ms    89 ms  ae-4-4.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.82]
11    77 ms    83 ms    77 ms  ae-94-94.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.190]
12    77 ms    77 ms    77 ms  ae-4-90.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net [4.69.149.210]
13    77 ms    77 ms    76 ms  FACEBOOK-IN.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net [4.53.116.6]
14    96 ms    79 ms    80 ms  ae1.bb01.iad2.tfbnw.net [204.15.20.54]
15    85 ms    82 ms    83 ms  ae0.dr04.ash2.tfbnw.net [204.15.23.111]
16    94 ms    95 ms    94 ms  eth-18-2.csw01.ash2.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.123]
17    89 ms    89 ms    88 ms  www-11-01-ash2.facebook.com [69.63.189.16]

Trace complete.

Here are the results of WinMTR to facebook.com. When I pressed Stop it's stuck with the message Waiting for last packets in order to stop trace...

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                             192.168.1.1 -    0 |   47 |   47 |    0 |    2 |   25 |    4 |
|   L100.LSANCA-VFTTP-127.verizon-gni.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |    4 |    8 |   54 |    5 |
|  G0-9-1-5.LSANCA-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |    5 |    9 |   54 |    7 |
|so-4-1-0-0.LAX01-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |    5 |   13 |   54 |    8 |
|          0.so-1-2-0.XL3.LAX15.ALTER.NET -    0 |   47 |   47 |    6 |   11 |   54 |    8 |
|               0.ae3.BR3.LAX15.ALTER.NET -    0 |   47 |   47 |    7 |   12 |   77 |    8 |
|                   No response from host -    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|      vlan80.csw3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |    6 |    9 |   54 |    8 |
|    ae-93-93.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |    7 |   10 |   55 |    9 |
|      ae-4-4.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   81 |   88 |  141 |   82 |
|                   No response from host -    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|    ae-4-90.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   76 |   81 |  141 |   77 |
|FACEBOOK-IN.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   76 |   80 |  126 |   76 |
|                 ae1.bb01.iad2.tfbnw.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   76 |   84 |  127 |   78 |
|                 ae0.dr04.ash2.tfbnw.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   78 |   86 |  185 |  114 |
|           eth-18-2.csw01.ash2.tfbnw.net -    0 |   47 |   47 |   85 |   89 |  138 |   86 |
|             www-11-01-ash2.facebook.com -    0 |   47 |   47 |   86 |   91 |  142 |   89 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
paradd0x
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Nick
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    This would be difficult to answer, it could be the service at the other end, they(Verizon) could be throttling some heavily used sites. I would run tracert on a number of sites and see if the same router is lagging at the some point if so I would call Verizon if it one of theirs. – N4TKD Jun 24 '11 at 17:08
  • relatively low ping to what? what do you consider relatively low ping results? Do you see any packet loss? what do you see on traceroutes to given sites? on an mtr? Try to run all these tests to your DNS as well as various websites, compare results. I should also mention, direct connect to your ISP CPE to test. – MaQleod Jun 24 '11 at 17:26
  • Did you try disabling IPV6 on all the computers in your home? – paradd0x Jun 24 '11 at 20:03
  • @MaQleod - I posted results of `tracert` and WinMTR above. When I mention ping for video games, it's usually in the same range as all other players on the server. Typically < 100. – Nick Jun 24 '11 at 20:06
  • @Thiago M. - I have not tried this. Could having IPv6 enabled be causing this? – Nick Jun 24 '11 at 20:08
  • @Nick I don't recall the exact reason why, but IPv6 can sometimes slow down your internet for some DNS reason. – paradd0x Jun 24 '11 at 20:09
  • It would totally fail to shock me if Verizon has deliberately programmed their routers to give very fast connections to DSLReports and its brethren, to artificially inflate their speed scores. – CarlF Jun 24 '11 at 20:13

3 Answers3

3

Run tracert to Facebook and see what nodes it hits on the way there, then do the same for Google and compare them (you can also do this for your games). Specifically, look to see if it hits any of the nodes mentioned in your link (such as an alter.net node). This will help you determine whether it's an issue with Verizon nodes.

Basically, to connect to a server (google.com, facebook.com, your video game servers, etc), your connection has to go through a number of other nodes in the process. With your Charter connection, these nodes might have been different, which is why you're getting issues with the "better" FiOS connection where you didn't have issues before.

Also, depending on what game you're running, try a different server to see if you have the same issues. For example, Blizzard's World of Warcraft has servers in every timezone. If you live in New York and are playing on a server that's in California, then you might have issues, and they might be resolved by switching to an Eastern server. This will also help you determine if it's something on your end, or a Verizon thing.

When you have the evidence, contact Verizon and report the problem. You might get better answers from them than from us (especially if it's a known issue and you already did your homework to show that it's not user error). If it is on your end, then you can request a new unit and see if that fixes the issue (because there is a chance that you just have a bad modem/router).

Shauna
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  • Thanks for the info and suggestions. I've run a `tracert` and WinMTR. The results have been edited into my original question. Regarding the WinMTR results, where it says `No response from host`, is that a bad thing? – Nick Jun 24 '11 at 20:02
  • I'm not familiar with WinMTR, but it would stand to reason that it's not a good thing. – Shauna Jun 24 '11 at 20:59
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Well, for me it seems to be something related to your MTU, as the message Connected to www.facebook.com... suggests there is no DNS problem (if it was the message would be something like Searching for www.facebook.com...).

Could you use Wireshark to capture your Traffic when a website fails to load or the youtube video is slow? Preferable the former, as this would generate fewer traffic to inspect.

If you upload that wireshark dump somewhere, I'll have a look at it :)

Thilo
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Install and run this software, it can help you find the fastest DNS servers to use.

http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

Moab
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