MTR from India runs a continuous path trace from the Google LLC node in New Delhi to your target. The first hops will traverse Google's internal network before reaching a peering or transit exit point, which may be in Delhi, Mumbai, or another Google PoP depending on the destination. For paths to Europe and the US, traffic exits India via submarine cables landing in Mumbai, so the trace will typically show a domestic segment to Mumbai before the large latency jump marking the cable crossing.

Traces from India toward Singapore or Hong Kong are diagnostically useful for operators serving both South and Southeast Asia from a single regional deployment. If the trace shows the path going through Mumbai, then Singapore, then Hong Kong before reaching a target in Japan, the routing is adding unnecessary hops. A well-optimized path from India to Japan should exit via Mumbai, cross to Singapore or Malaysia via submarine cable, and then transit directly to Japan — any detour through Hong Kong adds roughly 30 ms.

India MTR traces to European targets will cross either SEA-ME-WE 5 or EIG (Europe India Gateway), both of which land in Mumbai. The cable crossing hop will show a jump from low domestic latency (~30 ms from Delhi to the cable head) to around 150–155 ms total. Loss at that cable-crossing hop is standard ICMP deprioritization. Real problems on India-to-Europe paths appear as elevated loss on hops in the destination country or at the target — if the MTR shows clean hops through Europe after the cable crossing, the connectivity is healthy end to end.

India has one of the largest internet user populations in the world, estimated at over 800 million active users — the second largest national user base after China. Despite this scale, the internet exchange ecosystem is less developed than in comparable markets. NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India) operates at multiple cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. However, a significant share of intra-India traffic historically transited through Singapore or other international points rather than exchanging domestically, driving up latency for purely Indian inter-ISP traffic.

Mumbai is the primary international internet gateway for India. Multiple submarine cable systems land in Mumbai and Chennai: SEA-ME-WE 4, SEA-ME-WE 5, EIG (Europe India Gateway), IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe), and SAFE all have Indian landing points. Mumbai's cable infrastructure makes it the natural aggregation point for India's international connectivity. Delhi is connected to the international layer via long-haul domestic fibre from Mumbai, adding 10–15 ms of intra-India latency for Delhi-originated traffic to reach submarine cable systems.

Our probe node in India runs on AS396982 (Google LLC) in New Delhi. Google operates significant Cloud infrastructure in India, with regions in Mumbai and Delhi. AS396982 is Google's primary infrastructure ASN globally, meaning this node benefits from Google's private backbone for inter-PoP communication. Reference RTTs from this node: New Delhi to Mumbai ~30 ms, to Singapore ~60 ms, to Hong Kong ~80 ms, to London ~150 ms, to Frankfurt ~155 ms, to New York ~215 ms.

Domestic carriers serving India include Jio (AS55836), Airtel (AS9498), Vodafone Idea, BSNL (AS9829), and Tata Communications (AS6453). Jio and Airtel together serve the majority of mobile internet users. Tata Communications operates one of the largest submarine cable networks globally and provides transit to many Indian ISPs and international carriers peering into India. DE-CIX Mumbai, launched in 2023, adds a new neutral peering point in the financial capital alongside NIXI Mumbai and Mumbai-IX.

Testing from the New Delhi node provides visibility into North Indian network conditions. India is a geographically large country — a result from Delhi does not represent Mumbai or Chennai, which have direct submarine cable access and consequently lower international latency. For comprehensive India coverage, supplementing Delhi tests with a Mumbai-based node is advisable. The Delhi node is most representative for users in North India, Pakistan border regions, and Central Asian traffic that enters India from the north.