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Cuba's Internet Routing Is Messed Up

Posted by timothy on from the spirit-of-fidel-lives dept.

Internet access in Cuba has gotten far better in the last year, thanks in large part to thawing relations between Cuba's government and the U.S. In the case of a censorship-heavy, technology-impaired regime, though, "better" doesn't necessarily mean good. Northwestern engineering professor Fabián E. Bustamante and graduate student Zachary Bischof decided to quantify the performance of Cuban internet connections, and found them "perhaps even worse than they expected," with regards to routing in particular. Reader TheSync writes with this excerpt: During their study, Bustamante and Bischof found that when a person in Havana searched for a topic on Google, for example, the request traveled through the marine cable to Venezuela, then through another marine cable to the United States, and finally landed at a Google server in Dallas, Texas. When the search results traveled back, it went to Miami, Florida, up to the satellite, and then back to Cuba. While the information out of Cuba took 60-70 milliseconds, it took a whopping 270 milliseconds to travel back.

64 comments

  1. Satellite Internet by davidwr · · Score: 3, Funny

    It puts the "up" in "messed up".

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re: Satellite Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This sounds more like a bgp configuration problem on a US based border router.

      Not *that* hard to troubleshoot, just traceroute (TCP trace if some are configured to ignore pings) and look at the relevant bgp configs of the routers along the way to see who is pointing to the wrong autonomous system. A lot of times you don't even need to ask, as they usually have a looking glass configured for this reason.

    2. Re:Satellite Internet by JoeMerchant · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So, in 1990 when I accessed "the Internet" from the University of Miami main campus, the request went from main campus to the Marine school, from there to a satellite, back down somewhere in Colorado, and then started following a somewhat normal routing. Of course, if I was talking to FIU across town, that meant about 7 land hops from Colorado back to Miami...

      Sounds like Cuba's internet is better than U of Miami's was 25 years ago...

    3. Re: Satellite Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, like, why do you talk like that?

    4. Re: Satellite Internet by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      There are valid uses of the word "like".
      I don't see GP abusing it.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    5. Re:Satellite Internet by KGIII · · Score: 2

      I don't know a whole hell of a lot but I'm a fairly quick study and I know quite a bit already, maybe it would be fun to go there and volunteer to do some help? A kind of Cuba IT Group or something? My Google-fu is either weak or there's no such group of volunteers. I'd think that it'd be kind of fun. Maybe I can meet Raul and braid Fidel's beard while I'm there?

      Then again, maybe I'd better not 'help.'

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re: Satellite Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More precisely it sounds like BGP MED attributes are missing or messed up at AS border to connected countries. Not too hard to fix anyone understanding BGP even a bit, having management access to those devices and permission to do it.

    7. Re: Satellite Internet by jafo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Probably not a "problem", more likely it is a "decision". BGP routing isn't really about finding the fastest or best route, though InterNAP has some special sauce they can add via an appliance to help with that. It is about finding the "shortest" in terms of number of ASNs traversed, often weighted by company policy about what is cheapest. A satellite link directly to Cuba is probably fewer ASN hops than a cable to Venezuela and another cable to Cuba, so BGP picks that as best. The company pushing the traffic out the satellite either don't know to prefer the other path, have congestion on that link (just because it comes in that way doesn't mean it is going out the same link return, and there could be asymmetric loading), or it is more expensive to pass it to that provider. And it could be that using the exact same path to return traffic reduces latency, but increases loss due to overloaded links, so the satellite may provide a way better experience even if it is slower.

      BGP routing can be tricky.

    8. Re: Satellite Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      None of you kids ever used Download-only satelite links?

      They are actually the cheapest and yes the outgoing route is different(terrestrial) that the return path.

      Slashdot disgusts me these days.

    9. Re: Satellite Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, I think the issue was more about why the sentence stated with 'so'.

  2. in Soviet Cuba by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We route you!

  3. Gotta be copied and logged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The request has to be recorded by the NSA, and the KGB first. Of course, at dial up speeds....

  4. Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    should we have not routed all traffic for Cuba through the same computer trap in Miami? Was that something we shouldn't have done? Our bad!

    The CIA/FBI/DHS/everybody at this point

  5. happens everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This happens with me on Verizon as well. Traffic between two sites in the same city (Stockholm) goes down to Germany (and routes around a few cities) before it gets back to Stockholm again. Just because Verizon refuses to peer directly with some ISPs.

    1. Re:happens everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, his mom's dead, so...

  6. Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the censorship tag if the story is neither about American nor Cuban censorship? Have they verified the delay can be blamed on the NSA?

    1. Re:Censorship? by Sarten-X · · Score: 1

      If anything imperfect happens, it is obviously the result of nefarious government interference.

      So sayeth the hivemind.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does the NSA have to do with censorship?

      Do you have your acronyms mixed up?

    3. Re:Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It implies the NSA routes Cuban traffic to their code cracker satellite.

    4. Re:Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      while I agree that this story appears to have nothing to do with censorship I would like to point out that the US has dabbled in Cuban affairs before and tried to influence things on their soil. Is it the NSA? Or is it USAID? Are they really separate entities?

      I'm pretty sure it was right here on Slashdot that I read about ZunZuneo: yes, it was

      Okay, ZunZuneo had nothing to do with censorship either (although /. did give it the same censtorship icon as this story) but that's just one example and the point is that if the NSA wanted to bury some story they would probably give it their best efforts and might even be at least partially successful. Would you expect them to do otherwise?

      Do you think journalists never get paid off by governments? They don't have to control ALL the media - just the ones most people look at. All those other ones they can't control are looked down upon by the mainstream as being lunatics and tin-foil hat-wearers (largely because most of them are both although every once in a while they are right...that's why I read /.).

    5. Re:Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The lack of non-Asian diversity in Silicon Valley is clearly racism.

      The lack of Asians in the NBA is clearly not racism.

  7. No Better Here by darkain · · Score: 1

    Things are honestly no better here. Living just outside of Seattle, WA, doing a trace route to Amazon's anycast DNS servers routes through some really bullshit routes, depending on which DNS server I query.

    Seattle > Chicago > New York > London > Some random other hops in Europe > AWS
    Seattle > San Jose > Los Angeles > Japan > Some random other hops in South East Asia > AWS

    Never mind that Seattle is Amazon's headquarters, and they have one of their primary facilities just to the south of us in Oregon.

    Reported the issue to the ISP, the ISP's upstream provider, and Amazon. All three gave a "not my problem" response.

    Routing tables are often fucked to hell n back, this is just par for the course of the internet.

    1. Re: No Better Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's probably why everyone else uses Google or OpenDNS' anycast DNS servers.

      I have a VPS in Seattle. Both have 0.6ms latency from my server.

  8. OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    OMG 270 ms! How can the poor Cubans wait that long for a response from a search? Maybe they eat a sandwich during that time?

    1. Re:OMG 270 ms by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      OMG 270 ms! How can the poor Cubans wait that long for a response from a search? Maybe they eat a sandwich during that time?

      If you're a really quick eater.... seriously I know people with satellite connections with ping times like that. Inconvienient? Yes. Censorship? Hell no. If you want to do competitive FPS, you should probably find another ISP. But for generic information reception, processing and dissemination per the UN charter of human rights you're fine.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the Leftists must always whine about something..

    3. Re:OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the Leftists must always whine about something..

      And a whole group of people that qualify as Hispanics is just too irresistable for them to pass up. Only a nation of poor transgender bisexual black Africans who just formed a labor union would be more appealing to Leftists. I bet one of 'em just spermed up his pants reading that.

    4. Re:OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Satellite ISP customer here. Tonight I'm averaging about 610ms pings. That means the skies are clear both where I live and where my ISPs has their ground station. 800-1000ms pings are not uncommon for me.

    5. Re:OMG 270 ms by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0
      I don't think a country like Cuba is too concerned with the UN charter of human rights. Go ahead and have a look at it. Particularly Article 9, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."

      Cuban law greatly limits freedom of expression, association and assembly. Anyone attempting to voice views, attend meetings, or form organizations that do not conform to government policy or state ideology is likely to be persecuted, the punishments ranging from harassment and loss of employment to imprisonment and beatings. The judicial system in Cuba has little in place to protect these individuals since lawyers are employed by the Cuban state and are often reluctant to question seriously the arguments put forth by prosecutors or the Department of State Security.

      Now let's change the subject to America to avoid these inconvenient truths. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    6. Re:OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now let's change the subject to America to avoid these inconvenient truths.

      Shut up. You can't be protesting willy nilly. Now get back in your official free speech zone, and you can cry about whatever you want.

    7. Re:OMG 270 ms by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Anything over 200ms still sucks balls for VOIP and RDP / Citrix based usage. Basically, anything that requires real-time interaction over the web is going to be aggravating when going through space and back down again; speed of light limitation and all that.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    8. Re:OMG 270 ms by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      So anything that takes at least one trip to a GEO satellite and back.
      36,000km away, 300,000km/s speed of light. That's about 240ms round trip

    9. Re:OMG 270 ms by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      If you are an Aussie, every decent game server is a 250+ms round trip.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    10. Re:OMG 270 ms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can see this as being a problem.

      I am a programmer. I am kind of ignorant about networking though but I was once tasked with figuring out why one of our salespersons in bumfuck, Kentucky had such a shitty internet connection. Why this fell on me? Well, because it was my system he was accessing - forget calling his ISP. Why would they have anything to do with how fast his internet or more importantly what the lag time was.

      So, yeah our application was text-based and all went over telnet but every time he touched his keyboard that had to go up to a satellite and then come back down a couple thousand miles away and then the character got sent back over the same path before it could appear on his screen. He was very frustrated and understandably so.

      I looked around and found a good analogy explaining the difference between bandwidth and latency. I can't take credit for this and would give credit if I remembered where I found it but let's say you place an order for something that has to be shipped halfway across the country. You place your order and 3 days later it shows up. Wow. Okay, suppose you need a constant supply of this thing you ordered. You find out that you can order 50,000 of them at a time and trucks are constantly showing up at your business delivering goods which you process as fast as you receive them. Everything is great, but it still takes 3 days to get there. You just don't have think about that because trucks are constantly delivering stuff to you.

      The bandwidth is great (a truck shows up at your business with 50,000 more things every hour). The lead time? (latency) Well, it's 3 days.

      Now imagine that for every character you type it takes more than a quarter of a second for it to show up on your screen. This is not a problem for many (probably most) applications but when it does matter, it's really important and 270 ms is a fucking lifetime. You can't even type FOUR CHARACTERS PER SECOND!

      I'm not much of a gamer but I understand it's a big deal for them too.

    11. Re:OMG 270 ms by PPH · · Score: 1

      If you want to do competitive FPS,

      ... we'll drop you off on a beach in Cuba in person.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    12. Re: OMG 270 ms by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      "You can't even type FOUR CHARACTERS PER SECOND!"

      I live in South Africa, basically anything, except some content (Google has a node with search and mail in Johannesburg) and CDNs, is 200ms+ (rtt) away.

      In the past I riutinely edited files renotely iver ssh with 250ms rtt, and found no real issues. You most certainly can type at more than 4 chars a second, if you don't wait for each one to appear on screen before typing the next. But you learn not to make mistakes ...

  9. Dialup speed? That's fast by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Those old krusty KGB agents are lucky to copy it at reading speed.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  10. Maybe we should copy them by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

    Buggering up the routing of most of the traffic from China and a few other places to the rest of the world might be a good idea ...

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:Maybe we should copy them by Maow · · Score: 2

      Buggering up the routing of most of the traffic from China and a few other places to the rest of the world might be a good idea ...

      Seems like the traffic out of Cuba is indirect, but the traffic back in is truly messed up.

      And that seems to be entirely on the American side.

      Not that I disagree with what you said, it's just that that's not what is happening here.

    2. Re:Maybe we should copy them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For what it's worth traceroute slashdot.org gives 15 jumps and 49.290 ms
      granma.cu gives 30 jumps and 185.251 ms to the last recognized and a whole bunch of ***
      on the othere hand google.com gives pretty much nothing BUT ***
      whatever that means ???

  11. Rest of Worlds is messed up Cuba looks fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the description Cuba out is pretty good. It is the return trip that goes via satellite. So it is not Cuba's routing that is messed up, but rather the rest of the worlds routing to Cuba which is messed up.

    Going via Venezuela might be the biggest cable they have. I am pretty sure the is no Havana, Miami direct cable.

    1. Re:Rest of Worlds is messed up Cuba looks fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, thought the same thing. US/Texas needs to update their routing tables. We probably purposely didn't route to Cuba during the embargo.

    2. Re:Rest of Worlds is messed up Cuba looks fine by mutantSushi · · Score: 1

      Or, to clarify what "censorship" is at play here, the reason behind the download bottleneck here is US government siege/sanctions policy vs. Cuba preventing construction of Florida-Cuba cable. And apparently an unwillingness of US networks/ Google to peer with and route thru Venezuelan networks. All in all, the easiest most direct improvements to the situation are not in Cuban hands here, it would seem.

    3. Re: Rest of Worlds is messed up Cuba looks fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for clarifying that this has nothing to do with censorship.

      And the words you are looking for are embargo or sanctions.

  12. Not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Although the Internet usually interprets censorship as damage and routes around it, it hasn't quite figured out what to to when the damage slowly goes away...

  13. In the summary... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    replace “Cuba” with “Yakima, WA”.

  14. WTF is messed up ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This article is "messed up". It's an asymmetric route, nothing nefarious. Quite common and even normal. More than likely due to routing policies where cost is a concern. The professors claim of "worst in the Americas" is hyperbole. There are non island locations with similar or worse latencies. They talk latencies but nothing about bandwidth which I assume very constrained.

  15. Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll bet Cuba has better internet than I do here, 70 miles outside of DC.

  16. When you drive cars from the 50s because by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's all they let you own, well, dad-burn it, 300 ms ain't really so bad, now is it. In india, they got mud puddles for water. Cuba does not have that problem.

    Viva Castro! Julian, that is.

  17. Dammit Castro! You listened to APK didn't you? by Cito · · Score: 1

    They had to go fucking with hosts files, now they done went hog wild copying APK hosts files into all routing tables and have fuxx0rd da t00bz!

    Silly Cubans, APK is not for the weak :-P

    1. Re:Dammit Castro! You listened to APK didn't you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only weak thing I see is trolls like you proving trolls are weak.

  18. Routing is working as intended by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the way out, Cuban traffic goes through the firewall/monitoring setup Cuba has on loan from Venezuela. On the way back, it goes through NSA's Cuba-watch post in Florida. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

  19. 270ms? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    270ms is excellent for satellite communications. You would normally expect in the region of 3000ms RTT. Which why I think this story is nonsense.

  20. Just standard Satellite service by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is just what you get when you use satellite services.

    They are a *long* way up, so the round trip is quite large.

    This was very standard in the '90s for satellite services. Often you used a dial-up modem at 33K for your outgoing traffic and the satellite for the return path.
    The advantage of the satellite is that it could supply a large amount of bandwidth, the latency was just crap.

    There were a number of technologies which would pre-load all of the page in one hit, so the latency didn't add up.

    Also, just to get a perspective on this, that round trip time from the West coast of Australia to California is about 270 ms - (50ms less for east coast Aus), so I guess the OP hasn't got out much; this is quite normal in Australia and quite workable.

  21. Not messed up.... by freya_bacchus · · Score: 1

    It's improvised!

    --
    Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!
  22. Cito I see you admit being a paid troll/shill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & thanks for re-confirming what I already KNEW goes on http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    * IF you're being paid for screwing with me? Someone's wasting their money - I use the ultimate weapons against reprehensible online dirt like yourself - truth & facts.

    There's no defeating them, & as Hairyfeet (another /. user here said once) "You can swing your bats all day at the truth but you can't defeat it"...

    (Your kind? You're worse than street hookers - @ least they're honest about it)

    APK

    P.S.=> Tell your trollmasters/shillmasters I said "Hi, there - YOU FAIL" lol!

    Man - I really must be making headway because according to you? I must be upsetting SOMEONE's applecart by helping users online get more speed, security, reliability & anonymity - giving people, what they want!

    (Actually I give them what they NEED out there online today in threats - too bad I don't know how to make something to stop SCUM LIKE YOU too BUT TRUTH & FACT ARE YOUR UNDOING per your own words in the 1st link above)... apk

  23. So they don't have any CCNPs? by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

    Most likely whoever runs the border router(s) in question just needs to AS path prepend on the peering session with the satellite provider to make it look worse.

  24. Occam's razor. by sjwt · · Score: 1

    Congestion.

    Im sure you americans don't understand this, but even in other first world countries, bandwidth being saturated in one direction like this gets common in peak times, and when ISPs fail to keep up with growing demand it can become almost permanent.

    Whilst all your American bandwidth and internal routing costs pretty much nothing via sharing agreements, the rest of the world pays a premium to access it, so the lines into Cuba are under heavy load due to little content being hosted there compared to the US.

    Honest to god this made it past everyone?

    --
    You have 5 Moderator Points!
    Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
  25. Bs numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Am I the only one around here that still knows satelite links have way over 270ms latency, making the return time satelite routing clearly bogus?

  26. Today nearly all Cuban traffic is over the cable by lpress · · Score: 1

    This study was done last spring, when significant amounts of Cuban international traffic were routed over satellite, but in July nearly all international traffic moved to the undersea cable, significantly improving performance. Furthermore, the study used the only RIPE Atlas probe in Cuba, so may not have been representative of the entire island at that time. For details on the transition in July and the situation today, see http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2015/11/before-and-after-cubas-shift-to-alba-1.html.

  27. Cuban traffic is no longer using satellite by lpress · · Score: 1

    Cuba has moved nearly all international traffic to the undersea cable since the data for this study was collected.