3 Gig PureFibre — Severe Upload Throttling on Telus Server / Quebec Routing Loop

Question

Hi everyone, I need help from a Tier 2/3 tech for a specific upload routing bug on my 3 Gig PureFibre plan in Alberta.

Symptoms:

- Download is flawless at 2.37 Gbps (maxing my 2.5G NIC).

- Upload to Shaw and Telus Mobility is perfect and stable at 2.37 Gbps.

- Upload to standard Telus Internet servers drops and fluctuates wildly between 140 and 705 Mbps. It was perfect prior to today.

My Hardware (Cleared):

Technicolor NAH (bridged 10G port) -> Asus RT-BE86U (QoS off) -> hardwired to PC. The perfect 2.37G upload to Shaw completely rules out my cables, router, or PC settings.

Traceroute to 8.8.8.8:

1 <1 ms 192.168.1.1 (Asus Router)

2 2 ms 10.137.54.1 (Telus Local Gateway)

3 * * * Request timed out.

4 * * * Request timed out.

5 * * * Request timed out.

6 * * * Request timed out.

7 20 ms QUBCPQAJGR00.bb.telus.com (Quebec Backbone)

Conclusion:

My local loop to the gateway (Hop 2) is pristine at 2ms. However, outbound traffic hits a 4-hop blackout inside the Telus network before being detoured all the way to a backbone router in Quebec (QUBCPQAJGR00), where Telus-internal data gets heavily choked. Pings show 0% packet loss, suggesting it maybe a traffic-shaping or regional routing table error rather than a physical line fault.

Support agents just blamed my Asus router, completely ignoring that it pushes a perfect 2.37 Gbps upload to Shaw.

Could a backend engineer please look into why my traffic to Telus nodes is stuck on this Quebec detour and repair? Thank you!

nighthawk · Answer

The speed of your uploads and downloads isn't related to the DNS and routing being used to a CDN. Google DNS / 8.8.8.8, like most major services, uses a CDN so you aren't guaranteed to be using one specific server. It can also depend if you're using custom DNS on your devices or router. Routing is also not something support will deal with. Having the Asus router also means they have an out due to unsupported hardware. I'm reasonably confident that it isn't an issue but I'm not Telus tech support and have used third party routers in the past on my home connection.

Besides doing traceroutes to DNS, or random speedtests online, what problems are you actually having with your day to day usage?

From my fibre connection in Alberta, I don't see any Quebec hops at all in a traceroute or MRT. I'm not using a third party router. Just the older T3200 gateway from Telus that has the default Telus DNS servers on it. Hop 8 for me is a Google IP.

Same if I test to 1.1.1.1, or CloudFlare's free DNS service. Hop 8 is a Cloudflare IP.

roadrunner99 · Answer

Nighthawk, thanks for your reply. I appreciate your routing table. It looks like your path to google is local. My hop 7 appears to be rerouting away from Alberta and I am speculating that this is causing the internet upload speed to lag. Note, I mentioned Quebec but further research suggests the location is West Coast. I provided the information to help Telus engineers diagnose the problem. Effectively, I have a 3 gig plan up and down and currently my upload speed is varying wildly on the Telus Network from 140 to 700 Mbps. Somewhere along the Telus path, the upload speed is getting choked. On either the Shaw or Telus Mobility speed test servers, my upload speed is consistently 2.37 Gbps which is the physical limit of my desktop hardwired network card. These consistent speeds rule out the NAH or my home equipment and narrows it to something not working correctly on the Telus Fiber system for my location. Here is today's data:

telus_support · Answer

Hey RoadRunner99 - as Nighthawk mentioned, this is outside our area of scope but I am curious.
&nbsp;
You said that connecting to TELUS Mobility and the other server works fine. When doing a speed test on Ookla you typically pick a location, and a server. Which location and which server are you picking? If you connect to a different server does the issue disappear?

roadrunner99 · Answer

Hi, and thanks for responding. If you have a look at the Ookla speed test results I posted in my reply to Nighthawk​, on my Telus provider my upload speed is severely limited to 747.5 Mbps. The 747.5 Mbps is just an example. It has dropped to as low as 150 Mbps. I also posted the example of selecting the Telus Mobility server and the upload speed is as it should be at 2374 Mbps. When I select the Shaw test server, it is also at the max upload speed. And my trace route, which is via Telus, shows a long detour, to what I believe is the Cdn. west coast, to reach Google. I am in Calgary. I have double checked these results using a direct connection from my desktop via ethernet to the 10 gig port of the NAH. It is the same result. So, there is something haywire on the Telus route to the internet that is between the NAH and the endpoint that is degrading the upload speed. Note, that the Telus server was also perfect about a week ago, so whatever the problem is happened between then and about June 12th when I noticed the problem.&nbsp;If there is any other information I can provide for you or your team to troubleshoot this, please let me know.

nighthawk · Answer

One thing to note is that not all speedtest servers will guarantee full bandwidth all the time. Especially for a 3gbps connection. Some may be getting more saturated than others as well. If you're getting full upload to even one of the test servers, then there is nothing wrong with the speed of the connection overall. You seem to be focusing on two very different and unrelated issues.If you ignore the speestest websites entirely, what issues are you actually experiencing that impact your daily usage of the connection?&nbsp;