What do folks think of Metronet fiber performance in Bryan? What is your ping/latency when you run a speed test (ms) on google?

I am having latency issues which impacts virtual meetings (and gaming) significantly, though the bandwidth itself is great (900Mbps+ on a 1Gbps service). I am also seeing transmission errors outside my network (aka packet loss, see below for nerdery level explanation). I recently moved from Frontier in College Station, which wasn't quite as fast (700Mbps), but it was reliable with consistent lower than 15ms latency.

Customer service yesterday was responsive, but they said the next step was to send a tech out, even though they recognized the problem was outside my home. Tech came out, wasted time re-splicing, then told me that "everyone on Metronet in the area was seeing high latency because everything has to flow through Atlanta until we get our own fiber loop at some point in the future". He said he would report the issue to the network operations center (NOC) and they would get back to me in a day or so. Then I got the emailed work order and the tech reported "issue resolved" so I'm not holding my breath.

/Nerdery version. When I run a tracert to www.google.com with a laptop connected straight to the fiber gateway, I get timeouts on hops 2-3 consistently, and timeouts on others inconsistently. Tracert to any URL shows <5ms, timeout, timeout, then jumps up to 55+ ms when it appears to leave the Metronet network. It's been a long time since I pretended to be a network tech, but doesn't that mean there is an issue on Metronet's routers?

Note: If you run a speed test of your own using something other than google (like speedtest.net), make sure you change the server to something outside this area to get realistic results.

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Tracert to any URL shows <5ms, timeout, timeout, then jumps up to 55+ ms when it appears to leave the Metronet network. It's been a long time since I pretended to be a network tech, but doesn't that mean there is an issue on Metronet's routers?

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Timeouts that close to home feels like their equipment is just configured to ignore/drop pings. Then 55ms or higher later on is too high if it's happening regularly, my tracert to google.com has timeouts further down the line, but the pings that actually come through are mostly 10 or 11ms at worst.

NateDog said:

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Tracert to any URL shows <5ms, timeout, timeout, then jumps up to 55+ ms when it appears to leave the Metronet network. It's been a long time since I pretended to be a network tech, but doesn't that mean there is an issue on Metronet's routers?

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Timeouts that close to home feels like their equipment is just configured to ignore/drop pings. Then 55ms or higher later on is too high if it's happening regularly, my tracert to google.com has timeouts further down the line, but the pings that actually come through are mostly 10 or 11ms at worst.

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Thanks for weighing in, and that's a good point. I did have some random timeouts in other areas though and a few of my pings failed. What service are you on?

Brazos WiFi (fiber version). The owner posts here occasionally & he'd be much more qualified to diagnose your issues.

When Optimum eventually ran fiber out here and came knocking on doors, I told them no thanks I'm happy with my current provider because "I can contact the owner directly if I have an issue." Kid goes, hey, I used to be a tech, you can call me!

Felt a little bad for busting out laughing in his face. Then I found out Optimum is just rebranded SuddenStink, and I didn't feel bad any more.

Check out Brazos WiFi's coverage map at their website. Reliable service and hands down the best customer service of any ISP I've ever had.

We have a 25gbps interconnect with Metronet as one of our backups in case the 100g circuits to Dallas and Houston go down.

Overall, the connection seems ok but I feel like their peering to google is constrained. I'm not sure how their peering is handled but we see similar ping timeouts. As a note, google will drop pings as well even if the regular traffic is moving correctly. Ping traffic is the lowest priority traffic.

Traceroute traffic often drops if the internal routing IPs are not public facing. Some ISPs do this to limit their attack surface.

How do pings to 1.1.1.1 look?

Would love to have Brazos Wifi fiber, but I'm in the middle of town near, so no go

Appreciate the suggestion to ping 1.1.1.1, I think I have that set as my DNS. Will try when I get home, but I am getting similar high latency when going to anything off the Metronet network. Tried a bunch of different speedtest.net servers too, including Optimum, lol.

Metronet just installed our 1 Gig service. Questions:

1) what should our download speed be?

2) same for upload?

I've had Metronet for a little over a year (I'd have rather gone with Brazos Wifi but no fiber in my area yet :P )

I typically get ~50ms ping times to most places because Metronet's primary gateway is in Chicago, and their backup is in Atlanta. When I used to work for a radio station that had Metronet fiber, I often got ping times under 10ms - which is phenomenal.

I typically get 750mbit up and down on speedtest.net (but we know speedtest lies) on my gigabit connection. Fast.com, sometimes a better indicator (because it's hosted by netflix and if somebody's gonna get throttled, it's netflix), I usually get around 400mbit down and 500mbit up, with similar ping times both unloaded and loaded.

I routinely get 500+megabit downloads from steam, so that's a little bit better real-world performance indicator.

Gasbandit said:

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I've had Metronet for a little over a year (I'd have rather gone with Brazos Wifi but no fiber in my area yet :P )

I typically get ~50ms ping times to most places because Metronet's primary gateway is in Chicago, and their backup is in Atlanta. When I used to work for a radio station that had Metronet fiber, I often got ping times under 10ms - which is phenomenal.

I typically get 750mbit up and down on speedtest.net (but we know speedtest lies) on my gigabit connection. Fast.com, sometimes a better indicator (because it's hosted by netflix and if somebody's gonna get throttled, it's netflix), I usually get around 400mbit down and 500mbit up, with similar ping times both unloaded and loaded.

I routinely get 500+megabit downloads from steam, so that's a little bit better real-world performance indicator.

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Do you have 1 Gig service from Metronet?

Are you testing a wired connection or wifi?

LightningDammitt said:

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Gasbandit said:

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I've had Metronet for a little over a year (I'd have rather gone with Brazos Wifi but no fiber in my area yet :P )

I typically get ~50ms ping times to most places because Metronet's primary gateway is in Chicago, and their backup is in Atlanta. When I used to work for a radio station that had Metronet fiber, I often got ping times under 10ms - which is phenomenal.

I typically get 750mbit up and down on speedtest.net (but we know speedtest lies) on my gigabit connection. Fast.com, sometimes a better indicator (because it's hosted by netflix and if somebody's gonna get throttled, it's netflix), I usually get around 400mbit down and 500mbit up, with similar ping times both unloaded and loaded.

I routinely get 500+megabit downloads from steam, so that's a little bit better real-world performance indicator.

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Do you have 1 Gig service from Metronet?

Are you testing a wired connection or wifi?

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Yep, 1 gig service, testing on a gigabit wired card with a home network running on an HP 1920-24g managed switch, going through a TP-Link Archer A7 router.

While not true "gigabit," the bandwidth throughput results are better than I was getting from optimum by far, and the support and service has been lightyears better. The ping times are slightly slower, though.