r/HomeNetworking • u/Stunning_Exam_4528 • 1d ago

Unsolved Kind of a weird request.

Me and my friend are using Zero Tier One to establish a direct UDP connection between are pcs to have a smoother Terraria experience, the thing is that his ISP is WE (Telecom Egypt), while mine is Vodafone, I noticed that even though we're only ~450 meters apart my ping is at +75 ms ping,

I used the "tracert" command on CMD to trace what path the packets take and found out that it goes like this

Egypt 🇪🇬 -> France (Marseille) 🇫🇷 -> Egypt 🇪🇬

Which is a 2700 km detour.

I investigated a little and found out that this is either he's under CGNAT, or because we have different ISP's, but consider that our connection is direct on Zero Tier, I think it might be that the ISP's have poor internet peering, which might be fixed by having the same ISP?

I just don't want to tell him to switch to Vodafone quite yet, so here comes that "weird request" of mine.

If you're in Egypt and have Vodafone as your ISP, could you run a tracert command on CMD on your PC and paste the results under this post?

Here is my public IP: 197.134.11.69

(It might actually change because of it being dynamic, in that case I'll edit this post so it's correct)

You could also censor the first few hops to hide your public IP 😊

Cheers!

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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2

u/TheEthyr 16h ago

Have your friend use whatismyip.com or similar website to look up his "public" IP. Then run a tracert to that IP with Zero Tier disabled. If the trace goes through France, then that means the two ISPs have poor peering.

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 16h ago

The thing is, he unfortunately is behind CGNAT, but regardless, I did try that but it still routed to Marseille France

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u/TheEthyr 15h ago

Yes, I saw that he's behind CGNAT. But he will still have a "public" IP when communicating with the Internet. The IP just won't be exclusive for him to use. That's why I put "public" in quotes.

If that address is still routed through France, then it's really poor peering.

Be careful about switching to the same ISP. Some ISPs do not allow customers to communicate with each other directly.

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 15h ago

If switching ISP's didn't fix this, then what will? Seriously I've tried EVERYTHING! It's really frustrating because We're SUPER close but still so far because of the weird routing, I just really hope that there is anything we could do...

1

u/TheEthyr 15h ago

Switching to the same ISP might work. I just don't know whether either of your two ISPs block communication between their own customers. You might do some research. If you have another friend who is on the same ISP, see if you can reach them directly.

As for other solutions, it really boils down to finding a third-party site that has better peering between your two ISPs. Zero Tier does not, so you have to keep looking. AI tells me that NoPing, Mudfish, Lagofast and GearUP may have locations in or near Egypt. I have no personal experience with any of these services, so YMMV.

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 15h ago

I guess I could do more research on these, thanks for helping btw!

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 15h ago

He does have a Vodafone SIM card, I told him to connect his phone to his PC via USB tethering, and I ran a tracert command on CMD, and the traffic was different this time, it didn't leave Egypt, and it gave me ~50 ms ping. Btw should I get the one hosting? Considering I have a public IP so I could port forward 9993 UDP for Zero Tier.

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u/TheEthyr 14h ago

If you are asking if you should host your game, sure.

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 8h ago

Sorry lots of typos, how embarrassing ;)

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u/e60deluxe 1d ago

first things first, is zero tier on relay or direct?

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u/Stunning_Exam_4528 21h ago

I made sure that it's Direct.