TCP checks from India attempt a three-way handshake to the specified port from the Google LLC node in New Delhi. AS396982 is a globally recognized and clean ASN, unlikely to be on IP blocklists for legitimate hosting services. TCP connection times from this node to targets in Singapore should be around 60 ms; to London around 150 ms; to targets in Mumbai (where many Indian-market services are hosted) around 30 ms.

A practical use case is verifying that an Indian-market application's external API dependencies are reachable from India. SaaS providers, payment gateways, and cloud services that are critical to Indian-facing applications can be quickly tested with a TCP check from this node. If a payment gateway's port 443 is unreachable from the India node but reachable from Singapore, the issue is either a geo-restriction on that service's firewall or a routing problem specific to the India-to-target path.

TCP checks from India to targets in the Middle East (Dubai, Riyadh) are particularly useful for operators serving the India-GCC corridor, which has significant traffic volume due to the large Indian diaspora in Gulf countries. Round-trip TCP connection times of around 70–80 ms from Delhi to Dubai reflect the submarine cable path via Mumbai landing stations. Significantly higher TCP times on this path during business hours in either region indicate congestion at the submarine cable interconnect.

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.