Google Fiber Routing and Latency

When I first got Google Fiber I noticed the latency to some locations was higher than expected. After poking around with traceroute it was easy to see why. The path traffic was taking out of Google Fiber's network was much longer than it needed to be. Going to a location in Kansas City from my KC Google Fiber, it would route through San Jose. Other cities around the US had similar odd routing, except for locations near San Jose.

Early in the morning on March 19th, 2015 Google Fiber made routing changes that have now significantly improved latency for all the test locations I'd been monitoring that were higher than they should've been.

Note: All of these monitors are to Hurricane Electric core routers, so the loss statistics aren't necessarily accurate. (ICMP is low priority to respond to.)

The jump in latency in KC is the most staggering. From 33.3 ms average to 8.6ms.

To the person at Google Fiber made this change: I want to buy you a beer for making my latency in games that much better!