Minimum Latency

I'm not a broadband expert but I would like to ask what might seem a simple question. A couple of years ago I had a loss of speed fault and at the time my supplier Madasafish told me they had switched me to 'interleaved.' In fact this was not the problem, I had a wiring fault in the telephone socket which I cleared.
Since then the service has been rock solid at download of 6.3 (ADSL) and I have no complaints about that. However examining my monitor shows a minimum latency of about 37 or so.
Monitor
Now I'm not complaining, but I have been told this is high, and that it might be due to the interleaving. I've searched around on Google but am only getting fairly wishy-washy answers. I'm reluctant to fiddle with it if it 'aint broke' but would appreciate some more expertise opinions on this level. Many thanks.

You'd probably not notice any difference if the ping was say just 10ms less, which is probably the difference turning off interleaving will make.

Call or e-mail your provider to get interleaving switched of (or reduced) if you want.

Latency is basdicaly dependent on distance and the medium through which the signal is tranmitted, Unless the lngth of the line changes significantly latency will not change

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Unless the lngth of the line changes significantly latency will not change

Bob, please desist from posting misleading and inaccurate rubbish.

The extra processing required when interleaving is introduced will typically lead to an increase in latency of ~15-20mSec on ADSL and ~10mSec on VDSL.

Or, of course, a decrease in latency of the same amount when interleaving is removed.

In reply to a post by mandrake127:

I have been told this is high, and that it might be due to the interleaving.

It's a bit high, but not excessively so, and if interleaving is still present on your line then some of it is undoubtedly due to that.

I think 5km's estimate of a 10mSec improvement may be a bit low, but there's no easy way to be sure without getting it switched off and looking at the result!

Be aware that interleaving does provide greater tolerance to some types of interference on the line, and that removing it might (but equally might not) lead to an increased frequency of interruptions due to re-syncs. If this happens too often on a BT line the dynamic line management systems will usually put interleaving back automatically.

It probably won't greatly improve your speed (certainly not in proportion to the latency improvement), and unless you're a gamer and thus ping times are important to you, I'd be inclined to leave it alone.

Have a read of this from the KITZ website when you've time.

My first maaf broadband connection was a fixed speed 2 Meg ADSL one using Fast Path and the ping times were around 22-24ms

I later upgraded to MAX ADSL i.e. an up to 8 Meg connection where interleaving is a default for long lines and unstable connections and the ping times are around 46-50ms.

Most avid gamers like a connection with low ping times (low latency), I'm not a gamer so it's not an issue.

AFAIK the one way you can lower your connection's latency is to go onto fast path but that can mean that the stability that interleaving gave your connection will be gone, not a problem if the line is stable in the first place.

Your location in the UK is also a factor, e.g. people in Scotland and Northern Ireland generally have higher pings to London, by virtue of the speed of light in fibre and processing times of the various devices your data travels via.

For general web, streaming and downloading 37ms is adequate, and even for gaming a stable 37ms is better than one that is 20 ms but spiking up to 50ms.

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Unless the lngth of the line changes significantly latency will not change

Bob, please desist from posting misleading and inaccurate rubbish.

Don't be too harsh on him, although it may be slightly misleading and there are no caveats in his statement to qualify the term 'significantly', it is not inaccurate.
As a rough calculation you add at least 2ms of latency per 100 miles of fibre, and 100 miles is a significant change in line length.