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Owns doesn't means they use it for their internet services.
Especially for consumer plans.
Fastest ISP?
- Thread starter seowbin
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Especially for consumer plans.
SkyShroud
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Link with errors, clicking the cable itself show no starhub
Could be, they do have stakes in overseas ISPs so they could be investing on the principles that their partners use the cables while they simply get the profits.Owns doesn't means they use it for their internet services.
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Yes, may be for commercial users but not home user. No such thing as fastest isp.
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AI searches mentioned that Starhub has 5 underseas cables.
StarHub primarily utilizes a combination of its own undersea cables and third-party undersea cables to provide services to residential users. The company has invested in its own infrastructure, which enhances its capabilities in delivering reliable internet and telecommunications services. However, to ensure comprehensive coverage and optimal service quality, StarHub also leverages third-party undersea cable systems. This dual approach allows StarHub to effectively manage bandwidth demands and maintain competitive service offerings in the market.
StarHub primarily utilizes a combination of its own undersea cables and third-party undersea cables to provide services to residential users. The company has invested in its own infrastructure, which enhances its capabilities in delivering reliable internet and telecommunications services. However, to ensure comprehensive coverage and optimal service quality, StarHub also leverages third-party undersea cable systems. This dual approach allows StarHub to effectively manage bandwidth demands and maintain competitive service offerings in the market.
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AI search result:
For example, AAG (Asia-America Gateway) cable is not solely owned by StarHub. It is a consortium of 17 companies, including StarHub, that owns and operates the AAG cable system. StarHub is a major shareholder in the AAG consortium, which has a significant presence in Singapore.
StarHub is one of the partners of the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) too.
For example, AAG (Asia-America Gateway) cable is not solely owned by StarHub. It is a consortium of 17 companies, including StarHub, that owns and operates the AAG cable system. StarHub is a major shareholder in the AAG consortium, which has a significant presence in Singapore.
StarHub is one of the partners of the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) too.
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seowbin
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Since you talk specifically about starhub , this is what we use in the industry 
usually it is updated
https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1062
It seems like they have no overseas pop, just simply get a connection to overseas IX. This can be double confirm by traceroute to their IX IP from starhub network. I never try all but most of them are located in SG
usually it is updatedhttps://www.peeringdb.com/net/1062
It seems like they have no overseas pop, just simply get a connection to overseas IX. This can be double confirm by traceroute to their IX IP from starhub network. I never try all but most of them are located in SG
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My thinking is those who work for Starhub as their backend network engineer then can be sure.Since you talk specifically about starhub , this is what we use in the industry
https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1062
It seems like they have no overseas pop, just simply get a connection to overseas IX. This can be double confirm by traceroute to their IX IP from starhub network. I never try all but most of them are located in SG
Relek on the unverified AI generated crap la, who come to HWZ if they can just go chatgpt for that 
They definitely have the resources to do that, but why would they? They invest into consortiums to make more profits by leasing out capacity on their cables. Their retail customers are just used for statistics to inflate their company valuation.
Didn't know this way can guess if fake POP or not. Tried pinging their AMS IX router from ams vps and the ping implies it is indeed SG.
M1 US LAX Any2West also fake presence if going by this method.
ST London POP seems real. They have assigned IP 203.208.166.202 to one of the london routers. US also seems real. Establish so many POP but their boh let broadband customers use them all the time.
VQ also seems real for EU and US.
MR, I think don't use overseas IX. Rely on upstream de.
They definitely have the resources to do that, but why would they? They invest into consortiums to make more profits by leasing out capacity on their cables. Their retail customers are just used for statistics to inflate their company valuation.
Since you talk specifically about starhub , this is what we use in the industry
https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1062
It seems like they have no overseas pop, just simply get a connection to overseas IX. This can be double confirm by traceroute to their IX IP from starhub network. I never try all but most of them are located in SG
Didn't know this way can guess if fake POP or not. Tried pinging their AMS IX router from ams vps and the ping implies it is indeed SG.
Code:
PING 80.249.212.55 (80.249.212.55) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=158 ms
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=159 ms
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=158 ms
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=158 ms
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=158 ms
64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=158 ms
--- 80.249.212.55 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 157.972/158.241/158.590/0.191 msM1 US LAX Any2West also fake presence if going by this method.
ST London POP seems real. They have assigned IP 203.208.166.202 to one of the london routers. US also seems real. Establish so many POP but their boh let broadband customers use them all the time.
VQ also seems real for EU and US.
MR, I think don't use overseas IX. Rely on upstream de.
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VQ's Europe POP is in DE-CIX Frankfurt. Their LINX and AMS-IX peering is remote to Frankfurt.Relek on the unverified AI generated crap la, who come to HWZ if they can just go chatgpt for that
They definitely have the resources to do that, but why would they? They invest into consortiums to make more profits by leasing out capacity on their cables. Their retail customers are just used for statistics to inflate their company valuation.
Didn't know this way can guess if fake POP or not. Tried pinging their AMS IX router from ams vps and the ping implies it is indeed SG.
Code:PING 80.249.212.55 (80.249.212.55) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=158 ms 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=159 ms 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=158 ms 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=158 ms 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=158 ms 64 bytes from 80.249.212.55: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=158 ms --- 80.249.212.55 ping statistics --- 6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5007ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 157.972/158.241/158.590/0.191 ms
M1 US LAX Any2West also fake presence if going by this method.
ST London POP seems real. They have assigned IP 203.208.166.202 to one of the london routers. US also seems real. Establish so many POP but their boh let broadband customers use them all the time.
VQ also seems real for EU and US.
MR, I think don't use overseas IX. Rely on upstream de.
VQ's US POP is in LA Any2West. The peering at other IX is also remote.
VQ's BBIX Tokyo peering seem to be remote also.
negativzero
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Does peering really matter now?
For home consumers, most traffic is served by CDNs with less than 5ms latency and multi 10g uplink.
Only time peering matters is if you do BT, or your company has on-site IT infrastructure, in which case, business internet uplink will have better peering points compared to consumer internet.
For home consumers, most traffic is served by CDNs with less than 5ms latency and multi 10g uplink.
Only time peering matters is if you do BT, or your company has on-site IT infrastructure, in which case, business internet uplink will have better peering points compared to consumer internet.
negativzero
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This is absolutely useless, they may own undersea cable, eg if they own a 100gb fiber, they will probably give 10gb to consumer and 90gb to commercial. Cheaper and better to lease fiber from another provider especially since they are most likely a minority stakeholder.
SkyShroud
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Gamers need low latency, CDN only serve static contents.
Starhub does not have oversea POPs to improve routing, they basically peer with others and leave the routing completely to them. Starhub just like all other ISPs, just provide the basic internet connectivity, doesn't care if it is "best" because local regulation doesn't draw that bottomline anyway.
Even then, Starhub is less predatory than SIngtel, Singtel is known to not peer with others locally. If you use different international upstream carriers, you tend to see from time to time route to SIngtel is not local but through HK. For average consumers, might not matter because Singtel at least peer with CDN cidr but for gamers, not all games use AWS or Azure or Google servers, there are also private game servers that obviously don't use those big clouds due to budget.
Singtel has the biggest profit margin among all local ISPs!
Slight correction: SH leaves it to the overseas IX partner who will haul the traffic between the physical exchange point and SG as part of remote peering.
It's like a scaled down less powerful version of leasing subsea or terrestrial capacity. Depending on the economics ISP may prefer to remote peer from their home country rather than lease fibres to establish a physical overseas POP and essentially building a private backbone from ground up.
Why less powerful than subsea ->
1) IXP or its partner determines the path being taken to reach the ISP on shared bandwidth. ISP has no direct control over how routing is done to the IX aside from escalate feedback
2) Unlike a physical POP where you can buy IP transit to reach more networks from there, by peering you can only reach a select networks who connect to that IX and agree to peer with you
Local peering is still very important. ISPs who do not establish settlement-free peering in the home country are money making monopolist jerks who do not care about the customers. I am talking about Singtel of course.
With ST, smaller and newer networks are cast aside to interconnect at dumb places like HK or US, unless they pay even more for private peering in SG. In general it is more economical and beneficial to consumers for the ISP to peer at our local IX than paying third party transit to interconnect within the same country.
Take Digital Ocean SG to Singtel as an example.
DO (SG) -> Telstra (HK) -> Singtel (HK) -> Singtel (SG)
Singtel (SG) -> Telstra (SG) -> DO (SG)
Code:
HOST: Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- ??? 100.0 10 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
2.|-- 10.76.194.64 0.0% 10 0.4 2.3 0.4 17.5 5.3
3.|-- 143.198.252.0 0.0% 10 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.9 0.2
4.|-- 143.244.192.84 0.0% 10 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.9 0.2
5.|-- 143.244.224.234 0.0% 10 0.8 1.0 0.8 2.2 0.4
6.|-- 143.244.224.211 0.0% 10 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.0
7.|-- unknown.telstraglobal.net 0.0% 10 1.3 1.6 1.3 3.2 0.6
8.|-- i-93.sgpl-core03.telstraglobal.net 80.0% 10 2.2 2.6 2.2 2.9 0.5
9.|-- i-15650.hkck-core01.telstraglobal.net 0.0% 10 32.1 32.1 31.7 32.7 0.4
10.|-- i-92.hkmi01.telstraglobal.net 0.0% 10 31.2 31.1 31.0 31.3 0.1
11.|-- unknown.telstraglobal.net 0.0% 10 188.1 187.6 186.8 189.8 1.1
12.|-- 203.208.173.134 0.0% 10 221.6 221.6 221.4 222.0 0.2
13.|-- 203.208.183.82 0.0% 10 213.3 213.5 213.2 215.0 0.5
14.|-- 203.208.177.214 0.0% 10 38.6 38.6 38.6 38.7 0.0
15.|-- SN-SINQT1-BO117-ae4.singnet.com.sg 0.0% 10 38.8 42.3 38.7 72.4 10.6
16.|-- bb151-192-128-1.singnet.com.sg 0.0% 10 40.8 40.6 39.2 42.7 1.2ST-bound - Telstra to haul the traffic to Telstra HK POP. After interconnect at HK to ST, ST then they carry the traffic from HK POP back to SG on their own cable to reach the customer.
Towards DO, DO Telstra for the inbound bandwidth.
This results in both networks have to pay more to get 40ms latency when they can just physically within few metres apart. Who bears the cost to pay Telstra and who pays for the traffic haul to and fro HK? The clueless Singtel customer does! And also Digital Ocean, which is the whole point ST wants - to hopefully make DO realise this traffic exchange is costing DO too much, and to come up to ST to arrange for paid peering.
During which ST will probably hardsell their IP transit services as well, just like the consumer version of selling TV bundles as attractive addons which I didn't ask for. No one wins in such a situation really, just like the tariffs.
This is just one out of many networks in SG suffering from unsensible expensive interconnect with ST. Just look at this route between ST and Epsilontel SG getting hauled over to HK one way and US the other way. 217ms!
Code:
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. _gateway 0.0% 70 0.2 0.2 0.1 3.3 0.4
2. 180.178.72.73 0.0% 70 3.7 2.2 0.6 16.6 3.2
3. 180.178.72.10 1.4% 70 0.7 0.7 0.6 1.4 0.1
4. 180.178.72.11 1.4% 70 1.5 2.1 1.4 23.6 2.8
5. 112.174.88.41 1.4% 70 1.4 2.0 1.4 12.8 1.7
6. 112.174.80.37 2.9% 70 31.0 31.4 30.8 47.7 2.2
7. 203.208.183.101 0.0% 70 37.7 73.7 30.9 320.7 84.6
8. 203.208.151.94 1.4% 70 32.5 72.8 31.5 312.7 82.5
9. 203.208.158.206 1.4% 70 211.5 254.1 211.1 453.3 78.0
10. 203.208.143.130 1.4% 70 247.0 255.9 214.0 467.9 77.6
11. 165.21.139.133 0.0% 69 212.3 253.7 212.0 470.2 77.7
12. 165.21.139.170 0.0% 69 217.3 252.1 211.4 482.9 81.2
13. 165.21.193.234 18.8% 69 215.2 266.3 215.2 500.0 91.7
14. (waiting for reply)
15. bb121-7-160-1.singnet.com.sg 0.0% 69 217.4 260.6 217.1 511.6 88.3
Code:
3 202.166.126.64 (202.166.126.64) 28.790 ms 27.857 ms 28.203 ms
4 165.21.139.161 (165.21.139.161) 27.585 ms 27.523 ms 165.21.139.157 (165.21.139.157) 27.167 ms
5 165.21.139.134 (165.21.139.134) 26.724 ms 165.21.139.130 (165.21.139.130) 26.552 ms 26.248 ms
6 203.208.143.129 (203.208.143.129) 26.070 ms 12.739 ms 11.238 ms
7 203.208.158.205 (203.208.158.205) 17.656 ms 11.948 ms 16.872 ms
8 port-channel7.core2.pao1.he.net (184.104.198.254) 206.313 ms 203.208.182.86 (203.208.182.86) 194.236 ms 203.208.172.226 (203.208.172.226) 198.822 ms
9 203.208.149.249 (203.208.149.249) 198.999 ms 198.595 ms *
10 port-channel7.core2.pao1.he.net (184.104.198.254) 199.579 ms 201.266 ms port-channel2.core3.tyo1.he.net (184.105.64.130) 206.676 ms
11 port-channel4.core4.lax2.he.net (184.105.223.226) 202.387 ms 100ge0-68.core2.tyo1.he.net (184.104.199.210) 202.019 ms port-channel4.core4.lax2.he.net (184.105.223.226) 203.838 ms
12 * * port-channel22.core2.sin1.he.net (184.105.223.133) 226.758 ms
13 100ge0-68.core2.tyo1.he.net (184.104.199.210) 201.249 ms * *
14 180.178.72.74 (180.178.72.74) 246.943 ms 233.965 ms * *
15 epsilon-sg (x.x.x.x) 225.329 ms * 223.550 msYesterday I chance upon some posts by @bert64 and @firesong made a few years back which is still very relevant that explains this monopolist peering situation better than I can in the first 2 pages of this thread
SGIX, BBIX, Equinix, just peering into anyone of these should let you reach almost all networks in SG in few ms and even some APAC, except you know who.
negativzero
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I don’t game much nowadays but from what I remember back in the days of CS, we always picked the servers with the lowest pings, and that meant servers in SG. Now sure how latency dependent games like DOTA or Fortnite are nowadays but pretty certain if you want to play competitively, it is only local servers.
Overseas servers for casual gamers up to 100 ping is fine. We used to play D2/D3 connected to US with 200+ ping which is the physical limit of internet connections and we all coped fine.
I totally agree with your point on Singtel, their routing to Europe takes a long way via USA, resulting in over 300ms ping times. Problem with Singtel peering is it has become too big to offer settlement free peering to smaller companies. So the only option is to reach them via Starhub, go the HK route or pay quite an extortionate amount to get direct access. That said, the main benefit of Singtel is in their mostly Tier1 peering especially overseas, which for business customers is key.
Main takeaway point, avoid Singtel unless you are running business. When I switched over from ST to SH, really couldn’t find much difference.
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this reminds me when i used ST... hahaha
game servers is located in SG, but ST decided to go for this route instead:
SG -> HK -> SG
lmao, i had to use VPN just for this
game servers is located in SG, but ST decided to go for this route instead:
SG -> HK -> SG
lmao, i had to use VPN just for this
negativzero
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Easy to say settlement free peering, but how many local companies in SG have the backbone and capacity to 1:1 peer with Singtel? Thats why you only see the Tier1 ISPs or large CDNs having this arrangement with Singtel. Unfortunately at the end of the day, it is a business not a charity. If not happy with Singtel's quality, can always change to another ISP to serve your needs.
This is the number one excuse that monopoly ISP loves to use for refusing to peer. "I is premium network so you must pay me to use my premium network". By doing settlement-free peering, they claim that it is giving away "premium" access to smaller ISPs for free.
Premium not in the quality sense hell no, but in the size of its userbase. I fail to comprehend such a logic. Peering is and has always been mutually beneficial. The smaller ISPs are not "using" nor "free-riding" on Singtel's network, they are literally just trying to connect in the most cost efficient manner without incurring extra transit costs on both sides.
As if they didn't already extort their subscribers way more than the market rate by SH, M1 and co, now they claim that settlement-free peering will reduce investments and profits on infrastructure.
Is CDN77, Epsilontel, SG.GS, Hurricane Electric, GSL not already giant enough domestically and internationally to handle such a peering? Yet they are not in local peering agreement with Singtel because Singtel's peering terms are not sound and lopsided to their own profit!
At the end of they day, the networks must connect and exchange traffic whether small or large and regardless of whether the small ISP can handle it. If you can elimiate the Tier 1 costs and "international tromboning of traffic" to the US or HK (in their own words btw), I don't see why you shouldn't unless you have a motive to profit even more by using disgusting leverages to the smaller ISPs.
And no, Singtel doesn't have the strongest Tier 1 mix, and neither do I recommend them over the other ISPs for business. No basis for comparison here. However their main benefit is connectivity to China Mobile and China Unicom so if that is a major deciding factor over local. If you are business, go hit @seowbin up for the best of both worlds.
This is the whole point I'm trying to get at. Their subscriber count is still super large and this allows Singtel to continue bullying smaller networks. Singtel gets to be the jerks they are because the subscribers let them.
The tech savvy consumer will soon learn that ST are profiting jerks. But many who are not will simply renew their $50 contract because they were swayed by ST's marketing tactics.
We can only hope that majority consumers change their behaviour to research before buying and this is why consolidated threads like @xiaofan ISP comparison thread are important to make it easier for new readers to find information.
In the event that ST lost it's residential broadband market share, they themselves will be considered a "smaller ISP" locally and forced to change their commercial decisions to be more consumer-friendly. Otherwise, they can pivot and continue making profits in the enterprise scene and become like another NTT where they could face boycotts and get depeered from other T1s like Arelion and Cogent for similar antics refusing to do settlement-free peering. Deja vu?
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