Google DNS Possible Routing Issue? Or Load Balancer Issue?

84 views
Skip to first unread message

jasonco...@gmail.com

unread,
Aug 22, 2019, 11:56:02 AM8/22/19
to public-dns-discuss
Good afternoon! 

I recently found that when I ping 8.8.8.8 from my home network that the ping times are 500+ ms. I did a little digging and here is what myself and few other local IT guys have found... 

Trace Route To 8.8.8.8:
Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     3 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     7 ms     3 ms     3 ms  45-18-160-1.lightspeed.nsvltn.sbcglobal.net [45.18.160.1]
  3     6 ms     4 ms     4 ms  99.174.26.68
  4     6 ms     5 ms    14 ms  99.131.205.144
  5     9 ms     6 ms    10 ms  12.83.112.17
  6    12 ms    15 ms    12 ms  attga406me9.ip.att.net [12.122.141.221]
  7    12 ms    11 ms    11 ms  12.247.147.22
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9   432 ms   720 ms   717 ms  dns.google [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

You can see here that the ping times are fine until it hits the last hop which is the 8.8.8.8 DNS server which results in a 432 ms, 720 ms, and 717 ms ping time. 

Trace Route To 8.8.4.4:
Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.4.4] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     4 ms     2 ms     2 ms  45-18-160-1.lightspeed.nsvltn.sbcglobal.net [45.18.160.1]
  3     5 ms     6 ms     5 ms  99.174.26.68
  4     6 ms     6 ms     5 ms  99.131.205.144
  5     7 ms     7 ms     6 ms  12.83.112.17
  6    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  attga406me9.ip.att.net [12.122.141.221]
  7    13 ms    12 ms    11 ms  12.247.147.22
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9    11 ms    13 ms    11 ms  108.170.225.110
 10    12 ms    12 ms    12 ms  216.239.47.35
 11    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  dns.google [8.8.4.4]

Trace complete.

You can see here that the ping times are acceptable and there are no issues. 

Now what makes this more interesting is that a couple of other IT guys that I know in the area do the same tests. For at least one of them if they ping 8.8.8.8 ping times are normal however if they ping 8.8.4.4 they experience very high ping times. I also had them do a trace route to each DNS server and we found is that when they ping 8.8.8.8 it essentially takes the same path that it does when I ping 8.8.4.4. When they do a trace route to 8.8.4.4 the traffic appears to take the same path that it deos when I ping 8.8.8.8. This would appear to indicate that there is some type of routing or load balancer issue occuring with the Google DNS servers. 

Additional Information: 
Data and Time Of Issue - Now, 8/21/2019 (has been like this for at least three days)
Location - Murfreesboro TN
Platform - Windows 10 PC and PFSense Firewall (testing was done from both, both had the same results) 

I can do additional testing if needed and if a Google Employee would like my WAN IP address I can provide it. 

Thank You! 

Alex Dupuy

unread,
Aug 22, 2019, 3:26:36 PM8/22/19
to public-dns-discuss
Google Public DNS is a DNS service, not an ICMP service. So to measure the quality of service, you should be sending DNS queries, not ICMP packets.

A few ICMP drops, or particularly long response times for a ping, are normal and can be expected. If you are very concerned about reliability, you should use a dnsping tool (see https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/public-dns-discuss/p1o62SJElck/w0flYsmqBQAJ).
[Note that the 100 QPS rate limit mentioned in that linked post has since been increased several times.]

jasonco...@gmail.com

unread,
Aug 22, 2019, 4:12:36 PM8/22/19
to public-dns-discuss
Interesting. Have never seen this be an issue in the past though... also will say that this is not occurring occasionally, it is constant. I did however run the DNS checker and response times are around 10 ms.   

Tristin Terry

unread,
Sep 17, 2019, 9:07:36 PM9/17/19
to public-dns-discuss
Observing the same behavior.


Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    12 ms    27 ms    11 ms  108-78-32-1.lightspeed.brhmal.sbcglobal.net [108.78.32.1]
  3     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  99.173.217.42
  4     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  99.133.13.130
  5     4 ms     3 ms     3 ms  12.83.101.157
  6     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  attga406me9.ip.att.net [12.122.141.221]
  7     6 ms     5 ms     6 ms  12.247.147.22
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  108.170.225.108
 10   505 ms    67 ms   161 ms  108.170.225.105
 11   234 ms   441 ms   531 ms  dns.google [8.8.8.8]

On Thursday, August 22, 2019 at 10:56:02 AM UTC-5, jasonco...@gmail.com wrote:
Good afternoon! 

I recently found that when I ping 8.8.8.8 from my home network that the ping times are 500+ ms. I did a little digging and here is what myself and few other local IT guys have found... 

Trace Route To 8.8.8.8:
Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     3 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     7 ms     3 ms     3 ms  45-18-160-1.lightspeed.nsvltn.sbcglobal.net [45.18.160.1]
  3     6 ms     4 ms     4 ms  99.174.26.68
  4     6 ms     5 ms    14 ms  99.131.205.144
  5     9 ms     6 ms    10 ms  12.83.112.17
  6    12 ms    15 ms    12 ms  attga406me9.ip.att.net [12.122.141.221]
  7    12 ms    11 ms    11 ms  12.247.147.22
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9   432 ms   720 ms   717 ms  dns.google [8.8.8.8]

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages