Paris/Amsterdam throtling GRE packets?

Hi,

I have PPTP poptop servers in the US and Denmark that clients connect to from 
all over the world. I have suspected that somehow bandwidth is being limited 
whenever the clients signal is passing through France and Holland, especially 
Paris and Amsterdam but mostly suspecting it is in Paris. 

I can deduce this as I can perform traceroutes to the clients that complain of 
low speed and see that there are hops located in Paris and/or Amsterdam. 


I am normally based in Denmark but as I am now on holiday in Italy I can confirm 
this. The PPTP server in the US is extremely slow (0.2 mbit/sec) whereas the 
server in Denmark gives me 4 mbit/sec. Neither server is under load or 
experiencing problems. 

Performing a trace to the US server I get (partly):

13  89.96.200.21 (89.96.200.21)  28.152 ms 89.96.200.114 (89.96.200.114)  33.955 
ms  34.439 ms
14  mno-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.88.233)  36.235 ms  39.057 ms  40.844 ms
15  prs-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.160)  59.340 ms  61.892 ms  64.552 ms
16  ash-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.251.102)  147.749 ms  152.830 ms  152.911 ms
17  atl-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.137)  169.117 ms  171.069 ms  173.504 ms

Notice the abreviations: mno=Milano, prs=Paris, ash=Amsterdam(probably), 
atl=Atlanta (server is in Atlanta).

Doing trace to the DK server i get (partly):

13  89.96.200.21 (89.96.200.21)  25.733 ms  27.868 ms 89.96.200.114 
(89.96.200.114)  30.269 ms
14  mno-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.88.233)  32.857 ms  36.964 ms  37.479 ms
15  ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.249.38)  48.944 ms  51.017 ms  53.754 ms
16  hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.41)  65.639 ms  67.345 ms 
hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.39)  69.963 ms
17  kbn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.247.225)  80.455 ms kbn-bb1-link.telia.net 
(80.91.247.223)  81.614 ms kbn-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.130.101)  81.928 ms

Again: mno=Milano, ffm=FrankFurt am Mein, hbg=Hamburg, kbn=Copenhagen.

So my suspicions are confirmed here, the signal to the server in Denmark does 
not go through Paris and is not limited, the signal to the US goes through Paris 
and is severely limited.

They only limit GRE traffic by the way, when I am not on the PPTP server in the 
US I have full speed to everything. 

Also it might be worth noting that the customers I get complaints from are 
usually located in France or Spain and are trying to access the server in 
Denmark but are getting throttled, their signals are always going through Paris 
and/or Amsterdam.


Since the signal passes Paris on the backbone it must be some backbone hub that 
is set to throttle GRE bandwidth. 

Has anybody else noticed something like this? I am suspecting France Telecom for 
doing this by the way. How can they legally do that? Could there be any other 
reasons other than blatant throttling?  If they are doing it how can I make them 
stop? I am currently beta-testing a new server with multiple IP adresses so that 
should alleviate the problem as I'm guessing they're just throttling based on 
the IP address.


Cheers, 
T

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