[deanhills]

UPDATED: To account for the Port change issue


I'm curious, Did they respond @deanhills?

Thank you for updating your feedback @fChk, which already was excellent and helped me understand the issue much better.  I have a better grasp, but I'm still confused though.

Yes, the sponsor did respond. They maintain that the IP is a Phoenix IP - their response is quoted below (I've deleted the link info for security reasons - and added edited content of the link at the bottom of the quoted post).

Those speedtests don't really mean anything as they're using drastically different test points. Please provide different data/use a singular test point. We recommend against speedtest.net for testing, please provide data with other tests so we can take a deeper look. The IP is also associated with Phoenix.

Link info:

WHOIS-RWS
You searched for: 50.x.xx.xx
Network
Net Range 50.x.xx.x - 50.x.xx.xx
CIDR 50.x.xx.x0/xx
Name SHUB-NETBLK-PHX
Handle NET-50.x.xx.x
Parent EONIX (NET-50.x.xx.x)
Net Type Reallocated
Origin AS AS30693
Organization Virtual Machine Solutions LLC (VMSL-8)
Registration Date 2016-01-11
Last Updated 2016-01-11
Comments This IP address space is assigned statically to the registered customer. IP Addresses within this block are not portable. Please contact the reallocated customer for abuse complaints. If attempts to contact the reallocated customer are unsuccessful, please make an escalated complaint for UCE, SPAM and fraudulent activity that is strictly prohibited from this network by contacting the upstream at: [email protected]
RESTful Link https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-50.x.xx.x
See Also Related organization's POC records.
See Also Related delegations.

I disagree with their point about speednet, in that one can compare speeds from the US that would be relative to the test.  I.e. my HostUS VPS speed is excellent - using the same ISP.  I agree that speednet is not the go-to to use, but one can still compare the speed of one VPS with another that would be relative to the test used.

Ok!... I may be wrong but I'm afraid that changing port 22 isn't an option in your case and here is the logic of it.

In the eventuality that what I've proposed in the last post, as an explanation for what that "protected IP" thingy stands for @Virmach, is TRUE (and I think it is), then your VPS IP as you see when logged in must be an (internal)  private IP address (which means non-routable on the Internet(/non public.)

This means that your VPS is basically shielded from the Internet Jungle except for the ports that you have explicitly opened (80/443 etc..) Port 22 (for sshd) is your gateway to your VPS and (as such) must have been hard-coded in Virmach port-mapping connectivity between the public-facing interface (in Germany) and your VPS local interface (in Phoenix, AZ.)

In this logic your port issue is also linked to that "protected IP" status you have :-)

Obviously, I'm not aware of Virmach internal networking topology but I presume they must have a great deal of NAT going on for those "protected IP" cases. For as to why they have to do that?.. I'm not sure, but I would presume that it may have something to do with running out of US IPv4 addresses, which imposed the tunnelling of your connectivity to their German datacenter (?!), resulting in the deterioration of the service (ie, the latency increase and the connectivity speed hit.)

I'm still not certain about this - but that has been my own logical conclusion.  I'll ask @Dynamo but wonder whether if the IP has a "natural" location of Germany whether I could ask them to make my VPS German location?  I've hesitated so far as I thought - and maybe still am thinking - I'm not getting how the IP works.  

A couple of bash commands to test this:
>>> To get your local interface IP:
1-> ifconfig (Centos 6) OR > ip address (Centos 7)
>>> To see how your VPS is connected to the World, use :
2-> traceroute (+ any IP address/use your own IP from SAfrica)

The output of the second command is interesting, especially the first hops' IPs. I would bet that they would be private IPs (2/3 hops) and the first public IP to show up would be German.

I'm totally perplexed @fChk:

I did as you suggested. Total confusion, as the result doesn't start with the VPS IP that was given to me.  In fact my IP doesn't show up at all in the traceroute feedback.  The first IP is from Las Vegas Nevada - and starts with 107.  My allocated VPS German IP number doesn't feature any where in the traceroute feedback.

As an aside note. I don't think changing sshd's port does make much of a difference once you set the private/public key login and remove the password login for your SSH server. The only thing achieved in this case is shrinking the size of your /var/log/btmp binary file, which logs all bad login attempts.

Anyway, It would be interesting to know if you're the only one on Virmach hosting that has this "protected IP" thing.

PS: The ifconfig tool is provided by net-tools rpm package in Centos 7.

It makes a HUGE difference for me with the previous Phoenix IP.  Like login attempts went from thousands to zero.  

But here's a strange thing for you.  With my last access with Putty SSH with my new "German" IP, there were no failed login attempts.  That now has me baffled too. Maybe I don't need to change the Port number any longer.  And you're right - what I understand now is that the "German" VPS IP that was given to me is not visible at all.  

To summarize however. Now that I'm learning to work with how it is (vs with how it used to be), the speed feels completely OK for me. My uptime has been consistent sofar. My Website is still up since I loaded it two weeks ago. Access to my VPS is also fast. So I really have nothing to complain about other than trying to have a better understanding of how the new IP works.