Field notes on web performance and traffic engineering
We re-ran our quarterly probe matrix across 40 POPs. Median TLS handshake stayed under 90 ms for regional edges, while transcontinental paths keep paying the RTT tax. The full breakdown with per-region charts is in the notes section.
Anycast is not a guarantee: three providers silently shifted our Baltic probes to a Frankfurt tier-1 for six weeks. Here is how to detect it with passive measurements and why your RUM dashboard missed it.
QUIC blackholes still happen on restrictive networks. We compare fallback strategies (ALT-SVC downgrade, happy eyeballs, protocol pinning) with real-world success rates from our probe fleet.