hi all , 

i have an issue where a carrier that provides transit has decided to begin load 
balancing traffic across unequal path lengths.

ie, instead of 

     --R3--
   /        \
R1           R2
   \        /
     --R4--


we are seeing something a lot more like this

R1-----R3------R2
  \            /
    --R4      /
         \   /
          R5

as a result packets going via R4 & R5 are arriving with a different TTL and out 
of order to the tune of 30 ms or so. its throwing our monitoring tools out of 
wack because one minute a host is at hop 11, the next it's at 10. (watching 
path changes to bgp beacons) . with data payloads consider a voice stream of 10 
packets egressing at 20ms interval where by every other packet is being sent 
via the longer path 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

aside from the TTL issue we end up with packets arriving like this
1 x = x
2 x+20+30 = +50
3 x+40 = +40
4 x+60+30 = +90 
5 x+80 = +80
6 x+100+30 = +130
7 x+120 = +120
8 x+140+30 = +170
9 x+160 = +160
10 x+180+30 = +210

so for the original 1 through 10 packets that were egressed sequentially ends 
up arriving as

1 , 3 , 2 , 5 , 4 , 7 , 6 , 9 , 8 , 10

the carrier i'm dealing with doesn't seem to even comprehend that this is a 
problem .. can't say i've ever had that kind of reponse before and i'm left a 
little bewildered.. i'm used to hiding all this stuff away in the MPLS core and 
preserving the customer TTL's.. anyone else interacting with carriers who seem 
to think this is perfectly ok network design?? thoughts/comments/suggestions??

kind regards,

--matt

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