Traceroutes from Ho Chi Minh City

An intersection in Ho Chi Minh City

Doing traceroutes from the island of Ishigaki last year, I noted that country borders had a much greater influence on the paths that traceroutes took than geography. In particular, while Ishigaki is far closer to Taipei than Tokyo, from a network perspective it’s a far-flung provenance on a domestic telecommunications network centered in Tokyo. As such, traceroutes to Taipei and Singapore would go up to the capital before heading south on various international undersea cables.

To the extent that Ishigaki is remote, Ho Chi Minh City is central–it’s the largest city in Vietnam and a commercial powerhouse. And unlike the case of Japan, there is also the possibility of land-routes to neighboring countries. Over the past few years, however, a series of outages on the AAG Cable System and others has demonstrated the limits to current-generation cable systems that countries in the region face.

Incidentally, Ho Chi Minh City is replete with stunningly gorgeous coffee shops and co-working spaces, and WiFi is both extremely fast and nearly ubiquitous. As such, a great place to work on a blog like this one.

So, without further ado, a few traceroutes!

To Singapore

Singapore is only about 1100 km from Ho Chi Minh City as the bird flies, and two of the three1 cable systems landing at the nearby Vung Tau Cable Landing Station appear to terminate in Singapore. Given this, I was interested in the varied and occasionally circuitous routes that data appeared to take.

From a Mobifone 3G SIM Card

Direct to Singapore, via PCCW. Looking beyond the high and inconsistent latency of 3G, this was the most direct traceroute I saw.

traceroute to speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  172.20.10.1 (172.20.10.1)  22.433 ms  24.891 ms  2.060 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  10.53.107.158 (10.53.107.158)  723.474 ms  82.901 ms  69.191 ms
 6  10.53.108.21 (10.53.108.21)  70.775 ms  74.245 ms  92.052 ms
 7  103.19.164.129 (103.19.164.129)  97.821 ms  68.115 ms  62.009 ms
 8  po0-4-2-0.br03.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.217.24.45)  81.361 ms  89.471 ms *
 9  tenge0-1-0-3.br04.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.223.34.94)  1272.332 ms
    hundredge0-3-0-1.br04.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.223.34.74)  167.471 ms
    tenge0-1-0-3.br04.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.223.34.94)  73.271 ms
10  hundredge0-3-0-1.br04.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.223.34.74)  78.733 ms  79.161 ms  80.226 ms
11  139.162.0.10 (139.162.0.10)  79.674 ms
    63-217-24-102.static.pccwglobal.net (63.217.24.102)  89.038 ms  97.335 ms
12  speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4)  79.571 ms  614.369 ms
    139.162.0.2 (139.162.0.2)  3723.608 ms

From Coffeeshop WiFi

Searching for some of the IP address locations, this traceroute appears to take the domestic VNPT network to Hanoi (1140 km to the north, hops 6-8) before going south to Singapore (hop 9 and beyond).

traceroute to speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.5.50.1 (10.5.50.1)  1.640 ms  0.975 ms  1.199 ms
 2  192.168.2.1 (192.168.2.1)  1.416 ms  2.024 ms  1.195 ms
 3  static.vnpt.vn (14.169.0.1)  6.932 ms  2.412 ms  3.482 ms
 4  172.17.3.30 (172.17.3.30)  3.834 ms
    172.17.3.14 (172.17.3.14)  2.795 ms
    172.17.3.2 (172.17.3.2)  5.856 ms
 5  localhost (113.171.17.81)  2.305 ms * *
 6  123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.13.209)  31.401 ms
    123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.15.217)  25.624 ms
    123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.13.209)  15.996 ms
 7  localhost (113.171.14.250)  16.575 ms  16.659 ms  18.223 ms
 8  123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.10.66)  17.443 ms
    123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.10.126)  20.572 ms
    123.29.0.0.static.vnpt.vn (123.29.10.66)  16.052 ms
 9  203.208.175.197 (203.208.175.197)  48.986 ms  46.775 ms  46.686 ms
10  203.208.152.2 (203.208.152.2)  51.142 ms  49.058 ms  59.696 ms
11  ix-ae-20-0.thar1.svq-singapore.as6453.net (120.29.214.133)  68.809 ms  71.358 ms  69.069 ms
12  if-ae-11-2.tcore1.svw-singapore.as6453.net (180.87.98.38)  66.306 ms  65.987 ms  63.717 ms
13  180.87.67.42 (180.87.67.42)  43.331 ms  44.920 ms  43.185 ms
14  139.162.0.14 (139.162.0.14)  45.562 ms  43.244 ms
    139.162.0.6 (139.162.0.6)  45.766 ms
15  speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4)  43.797 ms  43.625 ms  46.726 ms

From Hotel WiFi

Despite low latency to nearby hops, latency to Singapore was the highest on my hotel’s WiFi. This is consistent with the route the data took, all the way up to Hong Kong (1500 km from Ho Chi Minh City) before going back down to Singapore (2600 km from Hong Kong).

traceroute to speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  172.30.0.1 (172.30.0.1)  4.508 ms  2.230 ms  2.289 ms
 2  ci53.8-194.netnam.vn (101.53.8.194)  8.221 ms  2.950 ms  3.337 ms
 3  ci173-133.netnam.vn (202.151.173.133)  2.472 ms  2.636 ms  5.001 ms
 4  172.20.1.79 (172.20.1.79)  3.156 ms  4.317 ms  34.731 ms
 5  1-43_2313.r0.409.mi.hk.iptp.net (103.6.131.174)  183.775 ms  184.156 ms  183.265 ms
 6  1-1.r0.ib25.gs.sg.iptp.net (103.242.75.224)  66.413 ms  67.116 ms  68.177 ms
 7  as10026.r0.ib25.gs.sg.iptp.net (103.242.75.228)  228.992 ms  291.649 ms  307.160 ms
 8  te0-0-2-0.wr1.sin0.10026.telstraglobal.net (61.14.157.109)  307.324 ms  230.485 ms  278.882 ms
 9  xe-0-1-1.gw1.sin2.pacnet.net (202.147.52.64)  306.586 ms  306.767 ms  308.869 ms
10  gw1.sin1.sg.linode.com (61.14.147.177)  216.694 ms
    gw2.sin1.sg.linode.com (61.14.147.179)  294.381 ms
    gw1.sin1.sg.linode.com (61.14.147.177)  305.342 ms
11  139.162.0.2 (139.162.0.2)  305.171 ms  327.848 ms
    139.162.0.14 (139.162.0.14)  300.600 ms
12  speedtest.singapore.linode.com (139.162.23.4)  302.936 ms  307.467 ms  307.145 ms

Impressions

  • My initial assumption was that Singapore would be ‘closer’ from the perspective of network topology than Hong Kong. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessarily the case. While this is hardly a serious or scientific survey, Hong Kong seems at least as good of a location to host content for the Vietnam market as Singapore.
  • Despite growing land connectivity, undersea cables remain essential to Internet connectivity in Southeast Asia. And while I didn’t experience it personally, the numerous news articles on Internet slowdowns related to undersea cable outages suggests that their impact may be significant enough to be noticeable even to end users. As new cables continue to come online, this will hopefully be less of an issue in the future.
  • Finally, while some of the traceroutes above may appear circuitous, in the experience of this end user Internet access in Vietnam is extremely fast, cheap, and reliable. Indeed, the WiFi at cafes in District 1 is faster, more widely available, and far easier to connect to than it is at home in Shinjuku.2

  1. AAG and TGN-IA; the third cable system at Vung Tau appears to be T-V-H [return]
  2. At various coffeeshops in Ho Chi Minh City I would typically get 50 Mbps down and 30-50 Mbps up on speedtest.net. At Starbuck in Tokyo I’m getting 36 - 40 Mbps down and 9 - 12 up. Also, while coffeeshops in HCMC often simply have a wifi password posted somewhere, in Tokyo one usually has to click through a roadblock splash page. [return]