Plusnet fibre broadband for gamin

Hi guys, I need help! I'm currently looking to upgrade my sky internet (up to 16mb) to a 38mb fibre broadband. I was wondering whether anyone here has any experience with plusnet for gaming and whether anyone has any advice as I haven't been able to find a definitive answer for my question.

If you're enquiring about latency, it's more a factor of the quality of your connection and not 'actively' influenced by the ISP/ CP.

If you have a noisy line or frequent sync drops, the DLM will instigate interleaving and this will increase latency for example. So optimising your own wiring will be advantageous (as it would with any connection type). Throughput rates won't influence your experience as these don't need to be high for gaming.

This is a factor I'm concerned with moving to fibre. I current achieve a 14ms latency between my modem and my ISP on an ADSL2+ service and have done as much as possible to influence this, includingI having fastpath enabled. I don't think the end user has any say over the latter with vDSL.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Aug-14 10:45:07)

On the one hand, that's true up to a point. With fibre you're affected by Openreach's DLM and the quality of the connection from your house to the cabinet.

But from the exchange to the destination, you're in the hands of the ISP and the quality of the backhaul and the peering to the internet and therefore very influenced by the ISP.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

But from the exchange to the destination, you're in the hands of the ISP and the quality of the backhaul and the peering to the internet and therefore very influenced by the ISP.

Of course, maybe I worded my response poorly. What I was trying to convey is that the ISP doesn't actively alter the end users connection to alter the latency characteristics of it. That being the case, that attribute of your connection will be the same no matter what ISP you use. You get what your given and have little influence over it through choice of ISP or any other factor.

Paul

Bear in mind if you traceroute any location, the first hop is your router, the second hop is your ISP. It's easy to see where the responsibility for high pings lies.

[edit] traceroute, I mean.

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Aug-14 13:24:52)

Plusnet tbb BQMs. Mine in my sig.

Plusnet has 20 gateways, and depending which you are on at any given time the latency can be different by a few ms. You can easily determine which you are on, and usually move to a different one by simply closing your PPP session and reopening.

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

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.69] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=55
Reply from 212.58.244.69: bytes=32 time=14ms 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 = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.68]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 15 ms 14 ms 26 ms lo0-central10.ptw-ag02.plus.net [195.166.128.196
]
3 14 ms 16 ms 13 ms link-b-central10.ptw-gw02.plus.net [212.159.2.15
0]
4 16 ms 13 ms 14 ms xe-0-2-0.ptw-cr02.plus.net [212.159.0.250]
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.4]
6 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms kingston-gw.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.239.6]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 17 ms 13 ms 13 ms ae0.er01.telhc.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.109]
10 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms 132.185.255.149
11 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms bbc-vip113.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.68]

Trace complete.

That's on Fast Path. As has been suggested, your ISP has no basic control over whether you are on Fast Path or Interleaved, and on some connections it can fluctuate. At least with the Openreach DLM it does revert to Fast Path from Interleaved if there has been a noise burst that doesn't recur, whereas the BT Wholesale ADSLx DLM used to stay on Interleaving once invoked.

Sky FTTC is also subject to the Openreach DLM. It is only "LLU" from the exchange to Sky.

If the DLM adds interleaving the normal initial latency step is 8ms up.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 21-Aug-14 13:31:59)

PIng? Or tracert?

Yes aware of that thanks. For the benefit of the OP, if he's not, you can find this information by performing a 'tracert' via a Command Prompt (Windows PC). You'll need the endpoint URL/ IP address.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Aug-14 13:05:26)

Thanks for sharing, that's very interesting.

Must admit that I've not bothered to perform a tracert on my line but, this has piqued my interest.

Paul

Yeah, tracert