Latency on FTTC products - ADSL24\BT\SKY

Looking to go from my rock steady BEthere ADSL to a FTTC product. The BE connection is a solid 18ms.

Any comments on how ADSL24 or SKY or BT products compare with regard to latency\packet loss.

6ms on Sky FTTC

15ms to multiplay.co.uk here. BT FTTC.

1800meter D-side line.

200miles from London.

Around 5 - 9ms with Sky fibre.

28ms to bbc.co.uk on infinity here. 8 extra for interleaving, 10 extra for route Winchester, Sheffield, London.

Best to tell us where you want latency for.

C:\Users\Bob>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 14ms

C:\Users\Bob>ping multiplay.co.uk

Pinging multiplay.co.uk [85.236.96.68] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 85.236.96.68: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 85.236.96.68: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 85.236.96.68: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 85.236.96.68: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 85.236.96.68:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

VDSL2 as a technology is pretty good latency wise - with fastpath on it's about a 5ms first hop, the same as Be. Unfortunately you can't control fastpath on VDSL2 like you can with Be so there's always a risk you'll get interleaved and can't do anything about it.

Additionally BT sometimes has funny routing, those in southwest London and generally west of London seem to get routed via Sheffield, meaning 20ms to London servers instead of say, 5-7ms. If I were you, I'd give Sky a shot - but it depends a bit on how much you care about this sort of stuff.

In reply to a post by drummerjohn:

Looking to go from my rock steady BEthere ADSL to a FTTC product. The BE connection is a solid 18ms.

Any comments on how ADSL24 or SKY or BT products compare with regard to latency\packet loss.

Or there's IDNet

http://speedtest.net/result/2269721249.png

A bit more expensive though.

Pinging newswww.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.58] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.58: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.58: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.58: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.58: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.58:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 11ms

Edited by Andrue (Sun 28-Oct-12 08:36:10)

Location counts.

My latency on Plusnet is identical to my previous latency on IDNet.

Thanks guys. I ask as I play online gaming. The 18ms I quoted was to bbc.co.uk

I live in Southampton

I am more interested in the latency being constant ie maybe always 25ms or 30ms as opposed to my VM 30Mb connection varying from 13ms one second to 100+ms the next. Makes online gaming much harder.

Edited by deleted (Sun 28-Oct-12 08:57:04)

I play Crysis 2 a lot in the late evening Friday - Sunday, when choosing a server pings are always reported at 100 or above, but during games my ping can be anything from about 20 up to just over 100 - guess that depends on where the server is.

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.69] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.69:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 20ms, Average = 20ms

I with Plusnet on the Fibre Extra package, and interleaving (currently just under 700) is quite high on my connection, in fact it seems to go up and down quite a bit, but its never caused any problems gaming that I'm aware of.

Edited by R0NSKI (Sun 28-Oct-12 09:32:54)

Jitter (aka ping variance) will be massively better on any of the FTTC providers.

This is my f8lure graph: http://f8luresig.mouselike.org/sig.png?/48975.png

In reply to a post by driz:

Jitter (aka ping variance) will be massively better on any of the FTTC providers.

I have a Samknows monitoring box which I've had for nearly 2 years.

On my ADSL2+ ISP (BE) I was getting RTP jitter averaging around 0.63ms and a spike at 3ms for the month of August (a full ADSL2+) month. On BT Infinity FTTC I'm getting an average of 0.23ms with a spike at 2.5ms for October (a full FTTC month).

A small improvement but not dramatic.

FTTP would be interesting, as then we would be measuring the ISP rather than the connection to the ISP

Interesting stats re: ADSL/VDSL2 jitter. Probably down to ISP and FTTC having greater bandwidth - meaning traffic doesn't induce as much jitter. I can't imagine the technology itself making any difference!

But the context of my reply was in response to him coming from VM cable!

Edited by deleted (Mon 29-Oct-12 11:29:49)

In reply to a post by driz:

But the context of my reply was in response to him coming from VM cable!

Gotcha! I've yet to see any Samknows members info from a VM connection, but I've seen enough of VM myself to know the kind of problems

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Gotcha! I've yet to see any Samknows members info from a VM connection, but I've seen enough of VM myself to know the kind of problems

That's why I have VM & BE. BE for online gaming and work VPN and VM for the kids\downloading as the VM sucks for QOS.

I am paying £28 for BE inc landline so though of going to a FTTC product but it needs to ideally be low latency and solid.

So it looks like it will be BT or Sky or Plusnet for £32ish inc line rental. Probably Sky due to the unlimited nature and non port port throttling.

Edited by deleted (Tue 30-Oct-12 08:33:01)

Plusnet don't really throttle now, only P2P between 8pm and 10pm, also gaming traffic is prioritized, and data allowance is now 250GB with midnight to 8am unlimited.

this is going to depend on location in proximity to 21CN node.

On a BTw based isp, which would include infinity I route via birmingham node, and as such my latency isnt great. (about 2ms per 10 miles).

On a easynet based isp eg. when I was on ukonline they have a POP in my city that has a direct route to london, then I got great latency under 10ms. (about 1ms per 10 miles).

On Virgin media I am not sure their network layout but the base latency is halfway in between what I got on ukonline and BTw.

Of course if interleaved it then adds a chunk as well.

right now I am leaning to sky FTTC because (a) they apparently have sticky IP's like VM that only change when the MAC changes and (b), the easynet backbone they use should give me a good base latency to london.

Plusnet Extra has fixed IP address for a one-off payment of £5.

Sunday 5am mine went onto interleaved for the first time since connection in Feb 2011. No apparent reason in my modem stats log or BQM.

Interleaving depth is 639 down, 1 up, and downstream sync dropped by about 5Mbps . Upstream sync about as it was.

Crosstalk as the cab starts to fill up?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Sunday 5am mine went onto interleaved for the first time since connection in Feb 2011. No apparent reason in my modem stats log or BQM.

Mine has been on interleaved for about 6 weeks now, having been non-interleaved for about 6 weeks before that. It just seems to come and go for no particularly good reason and I lose about 7Mbps downstream when it's interleaved. My sync speed has been the same for the whole 6 weeks (and my Plusnet profile still hasn't updated downwards since the change!).

What's your PN profile set at? And the syc?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What's your PN profile set at? And the syc?

69.8Mbps, 65802.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Sunday 5am mine went onto interleaved for the first time since connection in Feb 2011. No apparent reason in my modem stats log or BQM.

Interleaving depth is 639 down, 1 up, and downstream sync dropped by about 5Mbps . Upstream sync about as it was.

Now that's a proper thread hijacking right there. Please stay on topic.

Oops! I intended to include "Latency on my BQM rose from 13ms to 21ms." What I posted was just background info for it.

I should also have included

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 23ms, Average = 22ms

On Fast Path it was 13/14ms.

That better?

In my opinion the effects of the Openreach DLM, which that shows, are far more significant than getting data from users of three ISPs at random locations.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Oops! I intended to include "Latency on my BQM rose from 13ms to 21ms." What I posted was just background info for it.

And likewise, mine goes from about 10ms to 20ms when interleaving is on.