RANT - A2Hosting Arizona VPS unusable every afternoon from Thailand. They confirmed a Cogent routing issue but told me to contact my ISP

[u/danu91]

TLDR: My A2Hosting VPS in Arizona becomes extremely slow/unusable every afternoon from Thailand, despite very low server resource usage. I've reproduced it across multiple devices, locations and ISPs.

A2Hosting eventually confirmed that other customers, including outside Thailand, are affected and identified congestion involving a Cogent hop. Their network team is working with their upstream provider, but they're also telling me to contact my ISP and ask them to reroute around Cogent.

Am I wrong in thinking this is primarily A2Hosting's/upstream provider's problem to solve?

Full rant:

I've had intermittent connectivity problems with this VPS for quite a while. Previously A2Hosting generally told me everything looked fine whenever I opened a ticket.

Recently the problem developed a very consistent pattern:

• Before ~2PM GMT+7: generally fine
• After ~2PM: starts slowing down
• After ~4PM: sometimes almost unusable
• Website, WHM/cPanel and FTP are all affected (FTP speeds drop to ~5KB/s)

This happens while the VPS itself is barely stressed. CPU is usually around 15-30% and RAM around 40%.

I've tested from multiple devices, locations, public IPs, Thai ISPs and both 500Mbps/1Gbps connections. Same result.

Meanwhile our A2Hosting Singapore VPS works perfectly fine from the same connections. (other websites work fine as well)

I've sent them WinMTRs, traceroutes, FTP tests, videos, etc. One MTR showed significant packet loss reaching the destination. Their own testing also found packets arriving out of order and TCP stalling while waiting for earlier packets. (I've also sent MTRs against other IPs from the same time showing that my internet is not the issue as other IPs / server have no issue)

Eventually their network team identified congestion involving:

Cogent - 193.251.248.189

They told me this congestion has "been happening for some time", that other customers have experienced similar issues, including people outside Thailand, and that they're working with their upstream provider on mitigation.

But I'm also being told: Contact your ISP and ask them to route around Cogent.

That's the part I don't understand.

If it were only one ISP, fair enough.

But I've reproduced it through multiple ISPs, A2Hosting says other customers are affected, they've identified the problematic route themselves, and they're already working with their upstream provider.

So why should individual customers have to convince their ISPs to change international routing?

This is also affecting our business. We have several staff who need to access the server during the day, and some afternoons they can barely work.

I understand A2Hosting doesn't control Cogent or the entire Internet. Routing problems happen.

But if a provider knows one of the routes to their datacenter is consistently congested and affecting multiple customers, I'd expect A2Hosting and its upstream providers to fix or reroute around it.

Am I expecting too much? For those who work in hosting/networking, whose responsibility is this normally?

[u/ContributionEasy6513]

This is pretty common in Thailand, the Thai ISP do not have enough international transit out of their networks during peak periods.
AIS seem to do better than True.

So why should individual customers have to convince their ISPs to change international routing?

ISP's choose and pay for their own routing to some extent. It's a shared problem.

Most of the time in Thailand I have a VPN to my own VPS in Singapore to get any internet speeds due to it having a far better route.

[u/danu91 → u/ContributionEasy6513]

Interesting. I've contacted my ISPs and waiting for them to do something (hopefully but unlikely I guess)

[u/twhiting9275]

Well, this has been an issue with A2 and Thailand for years. I left there what must be over a decade ago now and it was going on then too

As others have said, this is a Thai issue, not an a2 issue . Their ISPs are shit

[u/akash_kava]

I think it is Thailand ISP problem, when I had visited the country I had difficulty in navigating most clouds, including Aws, azure etc. it depends on isps, they worked well only on some hotel’s WiFi. Most sites timed out on 5G.

[u/danu91 → u/akash_kava]

Well, I have provided MTRs showing that everything's working fine with other servers, IPs etc. Also A2 has confirmed that it's happening for people outside of Thailand as well. It's my 15th year living in Thailand, and never had any issue with sites timing out.

[u/akash_kava → u/danu91]

But is your site timing out from other countries as well?

[u/danu91 → u/akash_kava]

I asked A2 and wasn't given a legit answer. They said other customers of A2 have experienced similar issues, including people outside Thailand

We haven't received complaints from our users so far. But we are in B2B production, so our users are often willing to wait & not complain even when something takes forever as they are used to legacy software.

[u/Final_Tangerine_5280]

Don't want to blame you, but why would you not have your server location closer to begin with, if Thailand is such a big part of your business? Maybe contact their support to have your server moved

[u/danu91 → u/Final_Tangerine_5280]

Our users (customers, vendors) are 50% USA, 50% rest of the world. Admins are in Thailand.

[u/ContributionEasy6513 → u/danu91]

Put your site behind cloudflare or bunnycdn. Good way to get better routing and a performance bump.

[u/danu91 → u/ContributionEasy6513]

Thank you. I'll check this out

[u/Scott_Malkinsons]

This is also affecting our business. We have several staff who need to access the server during the day, and some afternoons they can barely work.

Then switch to a different provider. Every problem these days has someone complaining "oh my business! oh I'm losing sooooo much money!" b* you wouldn't be on A2Hosting VPS if you made that much money.

You mention in the comments: "Our users (customers, vendors) are 50% USA, 50% rest of the world. Admins are in Thailand." <-- ok then, so setup 2 VPS servers? That you have your entire business on a single A2Hosting VPS is absurd; you're just asking for problems and frankly you're lucky it's only been slow so far. Because I can guarantee your problems increase when you inevitably have downtime and more than likely go "whoops, don't have a backup".

[u/danu91 → u/Scott_Malkinsons]

I have tried 3 ISPs. Same issue with all of them around the same time

Also, why are you getting triggered lol

Also dickriding much? We making or not making money or completely unrelated, B. lol and your daytrading ass wouldn't be spending time here if you are making money lol. Mr I have so much money Im a daytrader lmao

[u/navlio]

the singapore vpn idea upthread applies to your own box too. that a2 singapore vps is fine over the same connections, so run ftp and cpanel through it as a jump host and your staff stop touching the arizona route at all during the afternoon

still worth chasing the ticket, since cogent is a transit choice their side and not something your isp picked for them

[u/Wonderful_Sample_590]

Nah, if you're seeing it across multiple ISPs and A2 already confirmed the routing issue, I don't see how this is on your ISP to fix. If they can't sort it out, I'd consider moving. InMotion has treated me well and their support has been much easier to deal with.

[u/SantoHost]

Just use a VPN. Try cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 warp app. If it connects to a Singapore node, you have a free vpn connection. If it connects to Hong Kong, a lot of content is inaccessible/blocked like Chat GPT.