I use Comcast for my high speed cable and usually, I don’t complain.
Tonight, I was tracing some traffic to see if I could figure out how traffic gets routed, and I was a bit surprised.
Look at this trace:
2 46 ms 69 ms 137 ms c-3-0-ubr05.boston.ma.boston.comcast.net [73.168.144.1]
3 43 ms 39 ms 171 ms ge-2-39-ur01.boston.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.158.33]
4 122 ms 67 ms 167 ms te-8-1-ur01.brookline.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.144.57]
5 193 ms 83 ms 214 ms te-8-3-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.144.53]
6 165 ms 135 ms 156 ms po-10-ar01.springfield.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.146.22]
7 177 ms 140 ms 189 ms po-11-ar01.chartford.ct.hartford.comcast.net [68.87.146.26]
Every trace is consistent with this path. It starts in Boston before being bounced to Brookline, Needham, Springfield, and then finally Hartford. Logically, it makes sense. What I find odd is that this is geographic rather than the hub/spoke type of routing I’d expect from Comcast since they’re such a large provider. It looks like all of my traffic goes to Hartford before hitting New York where it then hits the outside world. From there, it usually goes to Level3 or Global Crossing. I’m just surprised that Comcast has an internal network that big and routes it on that network rather than bouncing it to the outside in a big city like Boston.
Ah, this is what happens when a geek gets bored and doesn’t want to clean his house.
