Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong Node Cross-border Network Stability Test: How to Optimize Packet Loss?
As an SEO website optimizer and system operation and maintenance personnel, the overseas node I usually contact most is
Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong
. Many webmasters who do cross-border e-commerce, foreign trade independent stations, or simply do not want to go through the complicated filing process in China, often prefer Hong Kong ECS or lightweight application servers.
As we all know, the Hong Kong node is close to the mainland, and the Ping value is only 10 milliseconds to 30 to 40 milliseconds at ordinary times, which is as fast as a domestic two-line computer room. However, many webmasters often complain in the technical group after a period of operation:
"Why do you visit well during the day, and the website response slows down at eight or nine o'clock in the evening?" "Test with Ping tool, the packet loss rate suddenly rises to 10% or even 20%, resulting in frequent overtime of Google/Baidu Spider crawling and SEO ranking. How can this be broken?"
Network packet loss not only damages the retention rate of real users, but also is a search engine ranking killer (directly lowering the TTFB first byte response time and Core Web Vitals score of web pages).
This article will combine my recent actual investigation case, from
Network Test Actual Measurement
,
Packet Loss Location
To
Landing optimization scheme
, take you to find out and cure the cross-border network problems of ariyun hong kong node at one time.
1. Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong Node Cross-border Network Measurement: In Which Link Does Packet Loss Occurs?
When your users or search engine crawlers visit the website, the vast majority of people's first reaction is "Aliyun server performance is not good". But in fact, cross-border network links are very long.
A complete data packet from the domestic client to the Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong server needs to go through:
Local LAN → intra-provincial backbone network of the operator → national international export gateway → cross-border submarine optical cable → Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong POP access point → Hong Kong VPC intranet
.
1. Measured: late peak (20:00 - 23:00) link test
We use multi-node test machines in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.
MTR
(My Traceroute) conducted a tracking test on 2000 consecutive data packets on the Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong public network IP:
Off-peak period (daytime): the three major operators (telecom/Unicom/mobile) are directly connected, with an average Ping value of only 15ms ~ 45ms, and a packet loss rate of less than 0.2 in the whole process, with extremely excellent performance.
Evening peak (night): China Mobile (CMI): the most stable performance, packet loss rate is still controlled within 0.5. China Unicom (4837/9929): Slightly fluctuated, with a packet loss rate of about 1%-3%. China Telecom (163 backbone network): obvious congestion occurred at the international export gateway (e. g. 202. x.x), and the packet loss rate soared to 8% - 15% instantly.
2.
Accurate diagnosis of MTR packet loss nodes
The typical MTR routing node map we intercepted in the test is as follows:
Plaintext
Host Loss% Sent Last Avg Best Worst StDev
1. 192.168.1.1 0.0 200 0.5 0.5 0.4 1.2 0.1
113.x.x.x (local telecom gateway) 0.0% 200 2.1 2.3 1.8 5.4 0.5
202. xx.xx (Telecom Shanghai Export) 0.0 200 12.5 13.1 11.2 22.0 1.2
202. xx.xx (Telecom International Export Node) 12.5% 200 28.4 35.2 25.0110.2 15.4 <-[Blockage Point]]
5.47. x.x.x (Aliyun Hong Kong Portal) 11.8 200 32.1 36.8 28.1 105.0 14.2
6.172. x.x.x (ECS server intranet) 11.8 200 32.5 37.0 28.4 106.1 14.0
Diagnostic Conclusion
:
As can be seen from hop 4, packet loss did not occur inside ariyun's hong kong computer room, but in
China Telecom's Public Network International Export
. During the evening peak period, a large amount of cross-border traffic flows into the limited exit bandwidth, causing the public network routing node of the operator to actively reject/discard some ICMP and TCP packets.
2. a packet loss occurs on an Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong node, how should I optimize it?
Now that we know that the core bottleneck of packet loss lies in "public network export congestion of domestic operators", we can take targeted optimization schemes. The following from
Network Architecture Upgrade
,
Server Core Tuning
and also
CDN acceleration
Three dimensions give the most practical solution.
1. Line-level optimization: upgrade to "BGP (multi-line)_boutique" line (triple network CN2/GIA)
If you are using a common public network IP(BGP multi-line), the evening peak is a common backbone network.
Optimized operation: In the Alibaba Cloud console, bind or replace the common elastic public network IP(EIP) with BGP (multi-line)_premium line EIP.
Principle: boutique line
Integrated China Telecom CN2 GIA, China Unicom CUG(9929) and China Mobile CMI's high-quality direct connection line. It bypasses the congested ordinary public network international exit and takes a dedicated low-latency channel.
Measured effect: after upgrading to high-quality EIP, the packet loss rate of telecom's evening peak dropped directly from 12% to below 0.1, and the Ping delay was locked at about 25ms, leaving Caton completely.
2. Software and system level optimization: open TCP BBR congestion control algorithm
If you don't want to replace the line cost, you can improve the anti-packet loss capability by optimizing the TCP protocol stack of the Linux server.
The CUBIC congestion control algorithm used by Linux by default is extremely sensitive to packet loss, and the packet sending rate will be greatly reduced whenever packet loss is encountered. developed by Google.
BBR algorithm
(Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT) dynamically adjusts the contracting strategy based on bandwidth and latency,
In a network environment with up to 15% - 20% packet loss, it can still run full bandwidth.
.
On Ubuntu/Debian, open BBR with one click:
Modify
/etc/sysctl.conf
file, add the following two lines:
Bash
net.core.default_qdisc = fq
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr
Execute the command to take effect after saving:
Bash
sysctl -p
Input
sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control
If returned.
bbr
, indicating that the setting was successful. When BBR is turned on, the first page load time (TTFB) of the website during the evening peak is usually reduced.
30% - 50%
.
3. Architecture-level optimization: Deploy CDN or Edge acceleration
If your website is mainly pictures, articles, HTML static pages, there is no need to let the user's request every time directly connected to the Hong Kong server.
Use Cloudflare/Alibaba Cloud ESA (Edge Security Acceleration): Prepend static resource nodes to edge nodes.
Dynamic and static separation: Upload images, videos, and CSS/JS static files to Alibaba Cloud OSS buckets for global distribution through CDN.
Effect: It can not only reduce the traffic originally intended to hit the Hong Kong server by more than 80%, greatly reduce the bandwidth pressure of the server, but also avoid static resource loading failure caused by cross-border public network packet loss.
3. Enterprise and Station Master Operations: How to Reduce the Cost of Advanced Lines and Infrastructure in Hong Kong?
Configure "BGP Premium Line (CN2 GIA)", high-bandwidth ECS, and edge acceleration (
ESA) can indeed completely solve the problem of network packet loss, but for many start-up companies and webmasters with limited budgets, the charges for high-quality lines and high-quality Hong Kong ECS are not cheap.
How can you enjoy the top stability of the Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong node and maximize budget savings?
This requires good use
Official compliance channels to reduce costs and increase efficiency
:
💡Clever use of "Ali cloud recharge" to achieve hardware purchase discount
In the actual project operation and procurement, smart operation and maintenance supervisors and webmasters seldom directly renew their fees at 100 percent of the original book price in official website or purchase high-quality resources for Hong Kong nodes. They usually settle accounts through Alibaba Cloud's official authorized service providers (agents).
what is alibaba cloud recharge? alibaba cloud recharge is a very mature cooperation mode in the alibaba cloud ecosystem. Alibaba Cloud authorized agents will provide recharging and purchasing services for their corporate or individual linked accounts. Security and independence remain unchanged: your alibaba cloud account is still in your own control, console operation, server management, data security are all in the alibaba cloud official background, the official directly issue vat invoices. Enjoy discount: through the service provider to carry out Aliyun recharge, you can enjoy the official preferential activities (such as full reduction, multi-purchase discount) on the basis of an additional 10% - 30% exclusive discount or cash rebate subsidy provided by the agent.
For enterprises that need to purchase Hong Kong node high-bandwidth ECS, BGP boutique EIP or cloud database for a long time, it is very easy to save thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan of network hardware expenses by recharging on behalf of others in a year. The saved budget is invested in CDN and boutique dedicated lines, which can perfectly solve the pain point of cross-border packet loss.
4. Summary
Network packet loss is an inevitable objective phenomenon in cross-border business, but it is by no means unsolvable:
Location reason: first use MTR test to see whether the packet loss is at the operator's exit or in the computer room intranet.
Solution to packet loss: sufficient budget: directly open BGP boutique line (EIP) in ariyun background, once and for all; Zero cost optimization: immediately start the TCP BBR algorithm of Linux server to optimize congestion control; Static multi-website: access CDN/edge acceleration for dynamic and static separation.
Budget carefully: purchase high-quality Hong Kong servers and network resources in combination with Aliyun's top-up channel, and exchange for extreme network stability and SEO ranking improvement with lower cost.
