Rapidshare VSNL mirror: Updated

I’d recently written about the VSNL mirror that Rapidshare had put up and the company had confirmed it in their news section also:

Today we have integrated two new carriers in our network. Now you can download your files via VSNL and GlobalCrossing as well. We hope that you can download files even faster now. Especially users in countries, where the existing carriers have not the biggest lines will be able to download files much faster than before. Just check out which carrier is the fastest for you. RapidShare is now by far the most flexible and fastest file hoster with the most extensive backbone network world wide.

But, as pointed out in this thread, the mirror is not actually located in India, which could be reason why users are getting lousy speeds from the VSNL mirror. I should have checked out the IP, which, as it turns out, is located in Germany, in the post. To be fair to Rapidshare, the server is on the VSNL network (the network they acquired in taking over TeleGlobe in 2006, which is now VSNL International), and they have not specifically mentioned that the server is in India.

In any case, the episode only points out the mess that internet routing is in India, especially with NIXI still not being able to make a significant impact regarding private peering between ISPs and carriers in India (NIXI is not allowed to route international traffic, but VSNL International traffic should count as internal Indian traffic? I am not sure). Take a look at the traceroute from a VSNL leased fiber link to the IP and you’ll see how insane it is:

traceroute to 195.219.1.5 (195.219.1.5), 30 hops max, 46 byte packets
1 202.xx.xx.xx (202.xx.xx.xx) 0.536 ms 0.543 ms 0.587 ms
2 202.xx.xx.xx (202.xx.xx.xx) 0.311 ms 0.203 ms 0.213 ms
3 59.163.24.70.static.vsnl.net.in (59.163.24.70) 1.938 ms 2.188 ms 2.460 ms
4 59.163.16.154.static.vsnl.net.in (59.163.16.154) 148.703 ms 148.742 ms 14 9.626 ms
5 195.219.48.161 (195.219.48.161) 283.028 ms * 283.155 ms
6 if-9-0.mcore3.LHX-London.teleglobe.net (195.219.196.25) 283.399 ms 284.135 ms 283.029 ms
MPLS Label=157 CoS=0 TTL=127 S=0
7 if-6-0.core1.AD1-Amsterdam.teleglobe.net (80.231.80.29) 298.009 ms 298.376 ms *
8 if-0-0.core2.AD1-Amsterdam.teleglobe.net (80.231.80.14) 297.336 ms 298.252 ms 297.017 ms
MPLS Label=143 CoS=0 TTL=127 S=0
9 if-2-0.core1.FR1-Frankfurt.teleglobe.net (80.231.81.14) 290.764 ms 433.399 ms 315.002 ms
10 195.219.1.5 (195.219.1.5) 289.523 ms 290.385 ms 288.645 ms

Technorati tags: VSNL, teleglobe, rapidshare, BGP, NIXI