This is true. This is the only reason why I have kept my upstream on TW instead of PIE. I play apex and I get optimum pings in Singapore and Bahrain but when I was on PIE, I used to get a little high pings (around 90-100) to Singapore and it becomes abruptly unstable sometimes and you can't even play because of huge spikes. The only downside of being on tw1 is that you get a little higher pings to EU West as compared to PIE. But nonetheless, everything looks so smooth when you are on tw1 upstream. Bandwidth doesn't get choked, less spikes and more importantly you experience smoothness in streaming, buffering etc. HUGE DIFFERENCE
Singapore Valve Server:
AWS Singapore:
For Valve Singapore, it's 117ms till Equinix, but ludicrously jumps to 283ms subsequently:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.100.1
2 8 ms 3 ms 4 ms 182.176.0.120
3 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.0.2.221
4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 10.0.2.149
5 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 192.168.90.1
6 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 10.253.4.106
7 26 ms 23 ms 23 ms 10.253.4.6
8 116 ms 115 ms 115 ms rwp44.pie.net.pk [221.120.251.119]
9 119 ms 118 ms 117 ms 32590.sgw.equinix.com [27.111.228.176]
10 302 ms 339 ms 325 ms 192.168.152.5
11 288 ms 312 ms 283 ms 103.28.54.16
For AWS Singapore,
1 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms 192.168.100.1
2 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 182.176.0.120
3 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms 10.253.20.86
4 4 ms 4 ms 7 ms 10.0.2.149
5 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 192.168.90.1
6 24 ms 23 ms 26 ms 10.253.4.106
7 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 10.253.4.4
8 214 ms 225 ms 225 ms xe-0-18-0-3-1.r00.sngpsi07.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [116.51.27.49]
9 215 ms 221 ms 233 ms ae-0.a00.sngpsi07.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.74]
10 121 ms 121 ms 125 ms ae-0.amazon.sngpsi07.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net [116.51.17.46]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 117 ms 117 ms 118 ms 52.93.10.1
14 118 ms 118 ms 118 ms 52.93.11.17
15 122 ms 122 ms 122 ms 52.93.11.22
16 120 ms 119 ms 120 ms 52.93.8.97
17 121 ms 119 ms 119 ms 203.83.223.33
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 119 ms 118 ms 119 ms ec2-52-221-255-252.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com [52.221.255.252]
Remove 25ms because of the pings between Pindi and Karachi, and still, Transworld is a little lower on these routes. However, Nexlinx's Looking Glass portal has a much longer ping for AWS Singapore (around 203ms, and it's based in Lahore).
So PTCL is unpredictable in these ways that sometimes, pings will be high for all connections to some servers, sometimes high for some connections, and sometimes normal for all connections. I don't know if Transworld has this issue. Additionally, when I had Nayatel (which used Tw1 back then), pings would vary at times - sometimes, when Google would take 45ms, it could go up to 200ms (random spikes). This jitter would muck up VOIP, and I don't game but it would affect gamers too. PTCL doesn't have these random spikes - it's either a level increase or a level decrease (i.e. if a ping is 160ms, it'll have a standard deviation of 2-3ms unlike Transworld whose standard deviation is sometimes 200ms). But when there's no erratic deviations, I've noticed GENERALLY, TW1 has lower pings by 20-50ms, although vice versa is true, so it's a mixed bag until we get another pipeline, another backbone provider, and some business sense.
Edit:
US-East (Virginia) | 235 ms |
US East (Ohio) | 243 ms |
US-West (California) | 326 ms |
US-West (Oregon) | 348 ms |
Canada (Central) | 229 ms |
Europe (Ireland) | 188 ms |
Europe (London) | 179 ms |
Europe (Frankfurt) | 176 ms |
Europe (Paris) | 171 ms |
Europe (Stockholm) | 197 ms |
Middle East (Bahrain) | 72 ms |
Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) | 260 ms |
Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | 82 ms |
Asia Pacific (Osaka-Local) | 293 ms |
Asia Pacific (Seoul) | 325 ms |
Asia Pacific (Singapore) | 223 ms |
Asia Pacific (Sydney) | 449 ms |
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | 299 ms |
South America (São Paulo) | 352 ms |
China (Beijing) | 343 ms |
China (Ningxia) | 447 ms |
AWS GovCloud (US-East) | 244 ms |
AWS GovCloud (US) | 340 ms |