>Sometimes I get weird routing through Asia if a service determines I'm better suited for that. It's a mix of traffic, peering agreements between providers* an

>Sometimes I get weird routing through Asia if a service determines I'm better suited for that. It's a mix of traffic, peering agreements between providers* and QoS rules on the routers you hop through along the way. After your request leaves your ISPs hardware often you have no choice where it goes next. Something that wasn't mentioned was that this is why traders will pay millions to set up servers in DCs/IXs all the way between them and the market so they have more control over the route their traffic takes. Sometimes even running their own cables. SEA-ME-WE-3, the cable you were talking about was the only game in town for that side of the country until about 4 years ago when ASC came online. ASC has over 10 times the capacity (60Tbit/s) of SEA-ME-WE-3 which was below 1 Tbit/s until 2009 and is not only 4.6 Tbit/s according to wiki. It's worth noting that SEA-ME-WE-3 is administered by Singtel there are 90+ other investors (who were all getting preference or had capacity agreements at launch). * this is complicated, someone feel free to correct/expand but essentially carriers will lease capacity over particular connections and sometimes the agreements between two carriers will mean particular customers traffic may get preference, so on busy lines, businesses paying for higher SLAs get prefered over regular consumers who might shunted off to a lower grade connection where there's space. There's a great example with NTT's partnership with Formula 1 where NTT engineers go in before race day to location making sure all that incredible Digital Twin data is getting fed back-to-base to manufacturer's HQs in the UK or Germany etc. as fast as possible. Sure there's the pit crew, but there's a whole team back home who are watching and analysing data and relaying advice. F1 is really an incredible technical feat in more ways than just the cars.