Traceroutes from 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
- AAG and TGN-IA; the third cable system at Vung Tau appears to be T-V-H [return]
- 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]