Same broker, same ISP, different route at different hours

[Amanhasnoname]

Latency of 28 ms at lunchtime and 85 ms at nine in the evening, with the same cable and the same server. Nothing is broken at home. The path between the ISP and the broker's data centre just is not the same path at both times.

Internet routes are decided by agreements between networks, and they shift with congestion, maintenance and cost decisions. Evening traffic from streaming can saturate a peering link and push packets through a longer detour. For a scalper that shows up as higher round-trip times and, more annoyingly, as jitter.

To see it, run a traceroute or mtr (WinMTR on Windows) to the broker server address a few times a day: one in the morning, one at the London and New York overlap, one in the evening. Save the output. Look for the hop where latency jumps and for packet loss that continues to the end of the path, not just at one router, since many routers deprioritise replies to these probes without affecting real traffic.

Some platforms let a different access point be chosen at login, and that alone sometimes lands on a better route. DNS matters less than people think: it affects the moment of connecting or reconnecting, not the steady flow.

Has a route change ever been fixed just by switching access point, DNS or ISP?