I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this little curiosity. US ping (sourced from different networks, including cable customer in NE) to the consumer grade residental israel dsl cpe (currently cisco 871) look really nice and sweet, gotomypc works alright, consumer is enjoying overall internet experience. vnc from customer to US is a non-starter. ssh from US almost never works. ipsec performance is horrid. traceroute/tcptraceroute show packet loss and MUCH higher rtt than the corresponding direct pings on the reported hop entries. Is this some sort of massaging or plain just "faking it"? Or is such things merely net-urban myth? Here is a traceroute snippet 8 dcr3-ge-0-2-1.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.193.98) 31.008 ms 31.539 ms 31.248 ms 9 208.173.129.14 (208.173.129.14) 62.847 ms 31.095 ms 30.690 ms 10 barak-01814-nyk-b2.c.telia.net (213.248.83.2) 30.529 ms 30.820 ms 30.495 ms 11 * * po1-3.bk3-bb.013bk.net (212.150.232.214) 277.722 ms 12 gi2-1.bk6-gw.013bk.net (212.150.234.94) 223.398 ms 235.616 ms 214.551 ms 13 * * gi11-24.bk6-acc3.013bk.net (212.29.206.37) 227.259 ms 14 212.29.206.60 (212.29.206.60) 244.369 ms013bk.net * 246.271 ms 15 89.1.148.230.dynamic.barak-online.net (89.1.148.230) 251.923 ms 256.817 ms * Compared to ICMP echo root@jml03:~# ping 89.1.148.230 PING 89.1.148.230 (89.1.148.230) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=190 ms --- 89.1.148.230 ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 190.479/190.479/190.479/0.000 ms root@jml03:~# ping 89.1.148.230 PING 89.1.148.230 (89.1.148.230) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=186 ms 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=2 ttl=240 time=196 ms 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=3 ttl=240 time=187 ms 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=4 ttl=240 time=181 ms 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=5 ttl=240 time=184 ms 64 bytes from 89.1.148.230: icmp_seq=6 ttl=240 time=190 ms --- 89.1.148.230 ping statistics --- 6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5001ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 181.572/187.756/196.277/4.685 ms root@jml03:~# ping 212.29.206.60 PING 212.29.206.60 (212.29.206.60) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=1 ttl=241 time=179 ms 64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=2 ttl=241 time=171 ms 64 bytes from 212.29.206.60: icmp_seq=3 ttl=241 time=171 ms --- 212.29.206.60 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2001ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 171.388/174.375/179.968/3.972 ms root@jml03:~# ping 212.29.206.37 PING 212.29.206.37 (212.29.206.37) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=177 ms 64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=176 ms 64 bytes from 212.29.206.37: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=175 ms --- 212.29.206.37 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 175.412/176.516/177.187/0.858 ms Joe