verizon fios, northeast, routing issues?

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net>]

Any Verizon folks here?

I've been having some rather weird network issues lately - just reading 
email via IMAP, from home.  Over a 1gig FIOS connection to a machine in 
a nearby Tierpoint data center that has LOTS of good connectivity.

I just tried some traceroutes, and got some interesting results:

These originate on a machine connected to a 1gig FIOS feed, and end at a 
machine, located in a Tierpoint datacenter, about 10 miles from here.

traceroute to ntcorp.com (207.154.13.58), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  * fios_quantum_gateway (192.168.1.1)  3.530 ms  2.822 ms
 2  * * *
 3  100.41.27.110 (100.41.27.110)  14.970 ms  5.323 ms  6.306 ms
 4  0.csi1.bstnmafr-mse01-bb-su1.alter.net (140.222.10.32)  11.069 ms  
8.477 ms  17.097 ms
 5  * * *
 6  0.ae1.br1.bos30.alter.net (140.222.236.253)  17.121 ms  19.027 ms
    0.ae2.br1.bos30.alter.net (140.222.236.255)  19.795 ms
 7  * * *
 8  colo4-dalla.bear1.boston1.level3.net (4.53.61.86)  2205.648 ms 
8.331 ms  13.161 ms
 9  static-33-65-203-66.axsne.net (66.203.65.33)  16.951 ms  13.791 ms
    static-145-65-203-66.axsne.net (66.203.65.145)  21.503 ms
10  server1.ntcorp.com (207.154.13.58)  17.872 ms  15.902 ms  14.415 ms

Several things jump out:

1. alter.net is not a common path between here & there - usually a lower 
grade connection, when other backbones aren't working right

2. origin - alter.net - level.3 - endpoint is just bizarre, one would 
think that the regional FIOS network has a direct connection to level.3  
(it also seems kind of odd that the packets are flowing from Acton MA, 
to Boston, and back out to Marlboro MA - there's an awful lot of fiber 
running along Rt. 495, and the networks are fairly dense around here)

3. The intermittent, high delays (factor of 10) jump out  (also, when 
running ping tests, there seem to be intermittent periods of long 
sequences of timeouts)

All in all it's really mucking with both streaming services, and simply 
posting emails (SMTP timeouts).

All of which leads me to wonder if there's something mucked up with 
Verizon's routing tables (or a particular network interface).

Any insights (or fixes) to be had?

Thanks,

Miles Fidelman



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown