Need advice on monitoring a network

N4r35h

need general advice to monitor network connectivity of a dedicated server i have rented from OVH Mumbai, India,
complains and observed behaviours are

• Some specific ISP users would not be able to complete the FiveM handshake or would be stuck in that games downloading resources (this is often overcome by using another internet connection to connect once and then switch connections back to there ISP) [i havent looked much into this but could be related to MTU ?]
• Increased latency (a few months back i from Chennai, India would get ~26ms to this dedicated server but now its ~29-31ms)
• Increased latency and packet-loss at specific times of a day (mostly happens on a day to day basis)
  this packet loss is often reported by players as desync and affects a fair amount of the player base across different ISPs

in my initial limited monitoring and testing i was able to observe that this is not OVH Specific as other datacenters in the mumbai region such as leapswitch was also having a higher latency at these times when i can observe high latency to ovh mumbai, and also some traceroutes suggest that this might be a problem between TATA Communications <-> Airtel Connectivity in india (OVH Only peers with TATA Communications for this DC atleast as per there Weathermap)

looking for suggestions and tips to monitor, test and narrow down to identify the problem, i know that Indian internet infrastructure is not that mature,

Thanks for all your help in advance

tentor

For 1 the best way is to do two-way tcpdump while establishing FiveM handshake, so nothing you can automatically monitor unless you are able to get a monitoring probe at each home ISP possible

For 2 might be a good option is to monitor latency from your dedi to different networks of your users' ISPs

For 3 ask your users' to do the MTR when the issue arises

N4r35h

For 2 might be a good option is to monitor latency from your dedi to different networks of your users' ISPs

any suggestions for this ?

For 1 the best way is to do two-way tcpdump while establishing FiveM handshake, so nothing you can automatically monitor unless you are able to get a monitoring probe at each home ISP possible

yes would have to do that thanks

For 3 ask your users' to do the MTR when the issue arises

its essentially a trace route right ? geoip info on some ips feel wrong any tips here ?

tentor

@N4r35h said: any suggestions for this ?

I don't know anything on major ISPs in India and what uplinks they are using to provide you any detailed recommendations on implementing this.

@N4r35h said: its essentially a trace route right ? geoip info on some ips feel wrong any tips here ?

No. MTR is better than traceroute, mostly due to ability to run it as long as you wish it to. Thus it is extremely useful when dealing with latency and/or packet loss issue.

What I suggest you is to run MTR for at least 300 iterations.

N4r35h

I don't know anything on major ISPs in India and what uplinks they are using to provide you any detailed recommendations on implementing this.

no, im asking if you have any recommendations or suggestions on how to monitor latency to various isps for example i think there is something called smokeping

lowendtalkxdax

MTR is the superior version of traceroute, it also shows packet loss to each server along the way.

Just try it and you will know how useful it is

tentor

@N4r35h said:

I don't know anything on major ISPs in India and what uplinks they are using to provide you any detailed recommendations on implementing this.

no, im asking if you have any recommendations or suggestions on how to monitor latency to various isps for example i think there is something called smokeping

There are lots of options. Personally, I prefer Prometheus stack (for this exact task, you need blackbox_exporter)

kevinds

@N4r35h said:
[i havent looked much into this but could be related to MTU ?]

Are you one of the less-smart server admins that block ICMP?

0ka

@tentor said: i think there is something called smokeping

example of it
https://imgur.com/a/qby61H5
https://imgur.com/a/Ehz1ETr