I'm trying to resolve an issue where the VPN connection my wife uses for work is unreasonably slow. Running a speed test without VPN we get > 70mbps, but running the same speed test over the VPN and we get around 5mbps. We live in Vienna, VA and the VPN endpoint is in Washington, DC.
There's no obvious issue with the laptop itself or the VPN connection, and internet usage without the VPN is fine. Without any other ideas I figured I'd do a traceroute to see if there was maybe an issue with the routing. Based on what comes back from running a traceroute it looks like maybe, possibly, the VPN connection is being routed through Europe.
Here's a summary of the traceroute:
fios_quantum_gateway
- lo0-100.washdc-vfttp-311.verizon-gni.net (173.79.139.1)
- b3311.washdc-lcr-21.verizon-gni.net (130.81.219.152)
- * * *
- 0.ae7.gw11.iad8.alter.net (140.222.234.11)
- vodafone-gw.customer.alter.net (204.148.79.74)
- ae8-xcr2.nyk.cw.net (195.2.30.189)
- akamai-us-gw.nyk.cw.net (195.89.106.110)
- po110.**bleep**-b.sech-lga.netarch.akamai.com (23.57.97.245)
- ae121.access-a.sech-lga.netarch.akamai.com (23.57.97.251)
- 93.191.173.130 (93.191.173.130)
- a72-52-27-208.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com
- (* * * all the way down)
It's that 93.191.173.130 address in particular that's got me wondering. All the IP locator services place that in Europe. I know that large operators can serve the same IP from multiple geo-localities, and a lot of the ones returned by traceroute do vary in location depending on the service used, but 93.191.173.130 seems to be squarely in Europe.
If I'm correct in my assessment it seems to me that Verizon, being one of the main network operators in the US, would be interested to know that the traffic is being misrouted so horribly leading to unneccessary network congestion (?) and degraded performance. I would also imagine we're not the only customer experiencing the issue, and someone less technical would probably be more inclined to blame Verizon. My wife certainly does, and is ready to move to another provider.
I'm hoping maybe someone on the network operations team at Verizon, or someone who knows someone, might see this and politely send a query to their peers inquiring about the routing issue.