Why your traffic detours through Calgary or the US

Say you run a business in Medicine Hat. You open a website hosted across town, on a different provider's network. The buildings are a few kilometres apart. But your traffic can go to Calgary, roughly three hundred kilometres each way, and back.

That isn't a fault. Networks only swap traffic where they physically connect. The Internet Society's tracker lists no internet exchange in southern Alberta outside Calgary, and none along the Trans-Canada between Calgary and Regina. The nearest one listed to the east is Saskatoon.

So your request rides your provider's fibre up to Calgary, crosses over to the other network, and rides back down to the server in your town. Both networks pay to haul local traffic out of town and back.

And most traffic doesn't stop in Calgary. Our own traceroutes from a Rogers connection in Medicine Hat show it heading on to Vancouver, Seattle or Chicago. Even the City of Calgary's website was reached by way of Vancouver. Most Canadian traffic runs north to south, not east to west.

It doesn't have to be that way. From a TELUS connection in the same town, the City of Calgary's network answered in about nine milliseconds, through the Calgary internet exchange. The Rogers path, via Vancouver, took about forty-five. Where networks meet makes the difference.

Paths change, and every provider routes differently, so this is one snapshot, not a rule. But every extra hop to Calgary and back is delay you don't need. One cut fibre line can split two networks in the same town. And US paths mean US jurisdiction.

The fix is a local meeting place. With a shared exchange, local traffic stays local: shorter, cheaper, and still working when a long-haul line goes down. That's why this site marks Medicine Hat as a candidate.