Hi everyone,
I’m a BSNL FTTH user from Kerala, and I’d like to share my experience over the past few years in a structured and constructive manner.
I initially took my BSNL FTTH connection in 2022. Since then, I have been assigned public IPs from different BSNL address pools.
While some of these IP pools perform reasonably well, I have consistently observed that many of them struggle to provide stable and low-latency connectivity to international destinations.
Over time, I started analyzing the issue using traceroutes and independent measurement tools. Based on these observations, the primary concern appears to be related to inbound routing and BGP announcements.
BSNL currently announces it’s prefixes through multiple Tier-1 transit providers such as Cogent, PCCW, Sparkle, GTT, NTT, Tata AS6453, and others.
Tier-1 inbound paths are sometimes suboptimal for India-bound traffic due to routing and handoff locations.
For example, when tracing routes from Europe or the US towards BSNL IPs, the traffic often takes indirect paths, frequently passing through Singapore, before reaching India. This introduces unnecessary latency and results in higher RTT compared to other ISPs operating in the same region.
This raises an important question:
Why rely heavily on Tier-1 inbound paths when Indian transit providers such as Jio, Airtel, or Tata (AS4755) can often provide more direct and efficient routing into India?
In my specific case, the inbound routing for my prefix(CG-NAT) was initially handled via Cogent, Sparkle, PCCW, and partially Jio. During this period, I experienced higher latency and inconsistent performance, especially for international traffic.
After raising this issue and discussing it with the BSNL NIB team, changes were made to the inbound routing.
The prefix is now primarily routed via Jio and Tata (AS4755).
The improvement was immediately noticeable. International latency reduced by approximately 30–40 ms, and routing paths became significantly more stable and direct.
This experience clearly demonstrates that the limitation is not due to physical infrastructure or submarine cables, but rather due to routing policy decisions.
From a user perspective, this is encouraging because it shows that meaningful improvements are possible through relatively small configuration changes.
BSNL has a strong backbone and nationwide presence. With more consistent routing optimization, especially by preferring efficient domestic transit providers for inbound traffic, the overall user experience can be significantly enhanced.
If anyone from BSNL or the NIB team happens to come across this, I would like to respectfully suggest focusing on optimizing inbound routing policies.
In many cases, Tier-1 transit paths appear to be suboptimal for end users in India, particularly when traffic is routed through indirect international paths.
Wherever possible, preferring well-optimized Indian transit providers such as Jio or Tata (AS4755) for inbound traffic could significantly improve latency and overall user experience.
Tier-1 providers can still be retained as backup paths for redundancy, but prioritizing more direct and regionally efficient routes would make a noticeable difference for users.
I hope BSNL continues to refine its routing policies so that more users can benefit from better latency and stability.
Would be interested to hear if other BSNL users have observed similar behavior.
I’m a BSNL FTTH user from Kerala, and I’d like to share my experience over the past few years in a structured and constructive manner.
I initially took my BSNL FTTH connection in 2022. Since then, I have been assigned public IPs from different BSNL address pools.
While some of these IP pools perform reasonably well, I have consistently observed that many of them struggle to provide stable and low-latency connectivity to international destinations.
Over time, I started analyzing the issue using traceroutes and independent measurement tools. Based on these observations, the primary concern appears to be related to inbound routing and BGP announcements.
BSNL currently announces it’s prefixes through multiple Tier-1 transit providers such as Cogent, PCCW, Sparkle, GTT, NTT, Tata AS6453, and others.
Tier-1 inbound paths are sometimes suboptimal for India-bound traffic due to routing and handoff locations.
For example, when tracing routes from Europe or the US towards BSNL IPs, the traffic often takes indirect paths, frequently passing through Singapore, before reaching India. This introduces unnecessary latency and results in higher RTT compared to other ISPs operating in the same region.
This raises an important question:
Why rely heavily on Tier-1 inbound paths when Indian transit providers such as Jio, Airtel, or Tata (AS4755) can often provide more direct and efficient routing into India?
In my specific case, the inbound routing for my prefix(CG-NAT) was initially handled via Cogent, Sparkle, PCCW, and partially Jio. During this period, I experienced higher latency and inconsistent performance, especially for international traffic.
After raising this issue and discussing it with the BSNL NIB team, changes were made to the inbound routing.
The prefix is now primarily routed via Jio and Tata (AS4755).
The improvement was immediately noticeable. International latency reduced by approximately 30–40 ms, and routing paths became significantly more stable and direct.
This experience clearly demonstrates that the limitation is not due to physical infrastructure or submarine cables, but rather due to routing policy decisions.
From a user perspective, this is encouraging because it shows that meaningful improvements are possible through relatively small configuration changes.
BSNL has a strong backbone and nationwide presence. With more consistent routing optimization, especially by preferring efficient domestic transit providers for inbound traffic, the overall user experience can be significantly enhanced.
If anyone from BSNL or the NIB team happens to come across this, I would like to respectfully suggest focusing on optimizing inbound routing policies.
In many cases, Tier-1 transit paths appear to be suboptimal for end users in India, particularly when traffic is routed through indirect international paths.
Wherever possible, preferring well-optimized Indian transit providers such as Jio or Tata (AS4755) for inbound traffic could significantly improve latency and overall user experience.
Tier-1 providers can still be retained as backup paths for redundancy, but prioritizing more direct and regionally efficient routes would make a noticeable difference for users.
I hope BSNL continues to refine its routing policies so that more users can benefit from better latency and stability.
Would be interested to hear if other BSNL users have observed similar behavior.
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