Fibre Broadband For Gaming

In the next couple of weeks I will be placing an order for fibre optic at my new property.

I've been a Zen customer for years but unfortunately find it hard to justify the additional cost when there are all these great deals about.

My priority with the connection is a low ping time for PC gaming.

Does anyone have experience with the BT Infinity 1 product? Is there any change to latency at peak times? Been reading up some forums and it seems a couple of years back a number of people where having peak time issues but maybe that's in the past.

Any other recommendations for a cheap isp with stable latency?

Talk Talk are a big no no for me, I landed with them from a former Nildram account and I cant describe the hassle I had with their accounts dept.

Remembering the Talk Talk hassle makes me want to stick with Zen, but its a lot of money over the year.

Only relatively certain way would be to find someone on each of the providers you are considering on the same cabinet as you, and even then the DLM may behave differently as your lines are not all the same.

FTTC can mean a lower ping, but it is not guaranteed, e.g. old Be ADSL2+ customers could get pings under 10 ms and while some FTTC people see that, 15 to 25 ms seems a more common range.

My BQM monitor is here: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/83a437d35a0...

That's with Sky, who I think have a half price deal on at the moment for Sky Fibre. I'd recommend them, I have no trouble generally with peak time latency.

Thanks Andrew - I was more wondering about congestion problems with individual isp's perhaps causing latency.

Im going to order the 40 meg product rather than 80 meg to try and keep the DLM at bay.

Maybe ISP core network congestion is a thing of the past?

Hi there IP75

You line appears to be very stable from the monitor, 15ms ping. What download speed are you on?

How is the customer service with sky in your opinion?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

old Be ADSL2+ customers could get pings under 10 ms

only if within their london ring network, the rest of us saw ping a lot higher 20ms or higher was the norm for most of the uk , probably why they dropped their "king of pings" claims be there also had poor peering

Edited by tommy45 (Mon 20-Apr-15 21:26:05)

I'm on the 80/20 service currently, but I was on 40/10 for a while with a similar ping. I've not had to call upon customer services much, but they are UK based (or possibly Ireland) and not too rigid about following a script. On the Pro service you get support from what I believe is the old BE support team based in Bulgaria. They provide support online as well as by telephone.

I'd recommend Sky FTTC for gaming.

Very consistent connection - extremely reliable and low pings.

So nothing to write home about, average support at best

Far superior to the Indian call centres BT uses.

In reply to a post by dave2150:

Far superior to the Indian call centres BT uses.

i doubt anyone would have to do very much to be better than the outsourced bt retail support lol.
Though occasionally they can get it right (telephony side ) my last line fault was fixed within 48hrs of reporting it, and somehow the engineer visited my home on a Sunday, i didn't know they worked Sundays

Edited by tommy45 (Mon 20-Apr-15 23:57:49)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

So nothing to write home about, average support at best

You mean the Pro team? I've not had to use them yet so I can't say.

I have a Samknows monitoring box on Infinity 2. My latency during normal times is around 8.8ms, at peak last night (between 8pm and 10pm) it "shot up" to 9.16ms.

Lowest latency in the last week was 7.54ms and highest was 9.55ms.

The low was before I switched my router out for a new one so line retrained with the new router which has made a minor difference. Considering the swing then I don't think peak times are affecting me much.

In reply to a post by dave2150:

Far superior to the Indian call centres BT uses.

You just need to start talking technical to them and or ask to be passed to somebody technical and in most cases I get passed up the chain, and I just keep doing this until I get somebody local, this works about 80% of the time.

Paul

Just remember that none of the ISP's selling BTW FTTC have access to DLM settings like they did in the days of ADSL.

Whoever you pick if your line throws a wobbly, or you get some interference or a problem you will be at the mercy of DLM to do what it pleases.

As for which network - well I'm still (stuck) on ADSL with Zen at the moment using WBMC and I'm only 7ms from the the BBC at Telehouse Central (tested now from my London connection) and bar all the BT problems I've had not really had any 'network' issues with them as a provider I understand the cost issue - but it maybe that the cost can be justified by a reliable network.

Where do you normally game too - if you list a couple of IP's people may be able to do some trace routes and or pings for you to help see whats what.

Edited by IamQ (Tue 21-Apr-15 18:31:14)

Now't wrong with Sky's pro team at all. It's nice to be able to talk to someone that knows what they are talking about from the word go rather having to be passed through numerous people and end up speaking to someone that has a vague idea what you are on about.

In reply to a post by simon194:

Now't wrong with Sky's pro team at all. It's nice to be able to talk to someone that knows what they are talking about from the word go rather having to be passed through numerous people and end up speaking to someone that has a vague idea what you are on about.

They know what they are talking about, some would say otherwise, anyhow if your on FTTC they have no control over it, or BT OR dlm , and the GEA test isn't as informative as an unlocked modem

Been with BT,Sky and now talktalk

only sky i've had an issue with throughput which lasted 8-9 months

and effected a lot of people

theres like a 70 page thread on the sky forums somewhere.

How did that affect the latency?