best fibre broadband for gaming? latency/ping

Hey guys, my contract is up shortly and i am looking around for a isp which can offer a good service even at peak times. I have used virgin media which is unusable due to huge ping spikes(i have tried everything). Plusnet has been pretty good other then slight delay in evenings which does effect my gameplay.

I am looking at possibily bt or idnet's gaming package which they state is prioritised and there is no delay even at peak times.

if anyone could contribute feedback on who usually has the lowest ping times it would be great in making my decision. I am from yorkshire so around 12-16ms pings to bbc.co.uk.

kind regards

Its all down to what packages are available to you in your area.

Like can you get Fibre, is it FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) or FTTP (Fibre To The Premises)

I am one of the lucky ones to be able to get FTTP (Infinity 4) with BT and I get the following ping to the BBC Site:

ping -4 bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.128.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.128.81: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.128.81: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.128.81: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.128.81: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 151.101.128.81:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 3ms, Average = 3ms

And the following ping from Google's Site:

ping -4 www.google.co.uk

Pinging www.google.co.uk [216.58.206.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.206.99: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=51
Reply from 216.58.206.99: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=51
Reply from 216.58.206.99: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=51
Reply from 216.58.206.99: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 216.58.206.99:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 4ms

There are other people with other providers that have better pings than me.

I mostly get around 300Mbits down, but it does drop down in the evenings, but never drops below 200Mbits.

I have only had my speed drop down to about 45Mbits the once, but after phoning BT they resolve it and its been fine since.

Now, how is it for gaming?
Hmmm, that would depends where the online game is being hosted doesn't it.
I play online with US and EU friends, and I get about 160ms latency with my US friends which I think is good considering the distance, and I get about 7 to 9 ms latency with some EU (well UK based services) I get around 9ms latency on Blizzards World of Warcraft EU Servers and 140ms on their US Servers.

Those 140ms and 160ms latency might seem high but it depends on the type of game, but I use to play World of Warcraft on the US Server back when I only had 4Mbits ADSL 2+ connection and the latency used to be around 400ms and it was still playable.

Now how does this feel in the evenings, for me I have noticed the latency doesn't change at all.

I would also wait for other peoples comments before deciding.

Paul

Just be aware that ping times largely depend on your geographical location and how far you are from your ISPs servers or the location of what you're trying to ping. Most such locations are in London and you will find those with single digit ping times live in London or close to it. If your ISPs servers are in London,your ping times of 12-16ms seem to be about right from someone in Yorkshire - moving to another ISP may improve your ping times by a few ms or give you slightly worse ping times. You need to compare your connection to another connection (on a different ISP obviously) on the same FTTC cabinet or exchange in your city/town/village, for a more realistic comparison. So ask your neighbours/friends/family living in your street or locality what pings they're getting at evenings and also have a peek at their TBB BQM. Alternatively tell us what exchange and/or FTTC cabinet you're connected to and someone on TBB may come along (in the same location) and give you their feedback.

Btw I would take IDNet's gaming package claims with a pinch of salt, there was someone on here not too long ago who was experiencing evening slow downs on that package. Don't get taken in by any ISP's marketing fluff, just use hard evidence which I can't re-iterate enough MUST be from a connection on the same cabinet or exchange. Otherwise you're comparing apples with oranges. You may find one of the bargain basement ISPs (BT Retail, Vodafone, TalkTalk, Sky etc) offers the best peak time performance in your location...with the added bonus of being cheap as well

Good luck!

Just to add: I'm getting approx 20ms on a FTTP connection...from the Scottish Highlands. Unless I can change the laws of physics, I won't get much better ping times than this as my ISP is based in London

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Feb-18 08:00:51)

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Just to add: I'm getting approx 20ms on a FTTP connection...from the Scottish Highlands. Unless I can change the laws of physics, I won't get much better ping times than this as my ISP is based in London

I am about 3 to 3.5 miles (birds eye view), 4.3 miles by car from Telehouse in London which is probably also why I get low latency.

Mind you 20ms from Scotland is very good.

Paul

Interesting, so would you say a ping of circa 20 ms from down here in Devon on BT FTTC is normal?

In reply to a post by WilliamGrimsley:

Interesting, so would you say a ping of circa 20 ms from down here in Devon on BT FTTC is normal?

What are you pinging?

Paul

Wow, them ping times are amazing, unfortunately there is only fttc available in my area and ftpod which is to expensive.

Thanks for the constructive input.

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Just to add: I'm getting approx 20ms on a FTTP connection...from the Scottish Highlands. Unless I can change the laws of physics, I won't get much better ping times than this as my ISP is based in London

I am about 3 to 3.5 miles (birds eye view), 4.3 miles by car from Telehouse in London which is probably also why I get low latency.

Mind you 20ms from Scotland is very good.

Paul

mmm, i think i will just stick with bt and see how it goes. Since idnet use the same exhchange but different equipment i doubt there will be any improvement compared to bt.

Google.

In reply to a post by hassy123:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Just to add: I'm getting approx 20ms on a FTTP connection...from the Scottish Highlands. Unless I can change the laws of physics, I won't get much better ping times than this as my ISP is based in London

I am about 3 to 3.5 miles (birds eye view), 4.3 miles by car from Telehouse in London which is probably also why I get low latency.

Mind you 20ms from Scotland is very good.

Paul

mmm, i think i will just stick with bt and see how it goes. Since idnet use the same exhchange but different equipment i doubt there will be any improvement compared to bt.

I think BT are ok, any issues I have had have been resolved in a reasonable amount of time.

I still say wait to see what other people say first, there might be better out there.

I chose BT due to the other couple that supported FTTP cost a lot more for the same speed that we wanted and that we also got a free install and activation

Paul

In reply to a post by WilliamGrimsley:

Google.

I guess it depends on the routing it takes I guess.

Here is mine:

tracert -4 www.google.co.uk

Tracing route to www.google.co.uk [216.58.210.35]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  Yazoo [192.168.2.253]
  2     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  217.32.146.68
  3     4 ms     4 ms     3 ms  217.32.146.94
  4     6 ms     3 ms     3 ms  217.32.147.202
  5     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  213.120.178.65
  6     4 ms     3 ms     3 ms  217.41.168.107
  7     4 ms     3 ms     3 ms  acc1-te0-0-0-14.l-far.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.249.88]
  8     4 ms     4 ms     3 ms  core4-te0-19-0-26.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.255.199]
  9     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  peer7-et-0-1-3.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.86]
 10     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  109.159.253.185
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     3 ms     3 ms     4 ms  108.170.238.122
 13     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  108.170.232.103
 14     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  lhr25s11-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.210.35]

Trace complete.

As you can see it stays about the same throughout BT's network right up to Googles Servers.

Here is a trace route from Blizzards Overwatch EU Server to my connection:

TRACEROUTE:

traceroute to 86.161.*.* (86.161.*.*), 15 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.58.100.13 (10.58.100.13) 0.288 ms 0.280 ms 0.282 ms
2 37.244.24.130 (37.244.24.130) 0.519 ms 0.588 ms 0.694 ms
3 Blizzard (Blizzard) 1.399 ms 1.461 ms 1.510 ms
4 37.244.10.102 (37.244.10.102) 1.090 ms 1.105 ms 1.143 ms
5 137.221.65.31 (137.221.65.31) 7.139 ms 7.158 ms 7.160 ms
6 137.221.79.32 (137.221.79.32) 6.868 ms 6.646 ms 6.863 ms
7 LINX1.ukcore.BT.net (195.66.224.11) 8.132 ms 8.136 ms 8.124 ms
8 core3-hu0-2-0-6.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (62.6.201.194) 8.775 ms 8.778 ms 8.855 ms
9 acc1-10GigE-0-2-0-3.l-far.21cn-ipp.bt.net (109.159.249.30) 8.713 ms 8.590 ms 8.546 ms
10 109.159.255.195 (109.159.255.195) 8.335 ms 8.218 ms 8.245 ms
11 217.41.168.106 (217.41.168.106) 8.230 ms 8.402 ms 8.385 ms
12 213.120.178.64 (213.120.178.64) 8.866 ms 8.773 ms 8.758 ms
13 217.32.147.193 (217.32.147.193) 8.783 ms 8.848 ms 8.737 ms
14 217.32.146.101 (217.32.146.101) 8.289 ms 8.223 ms 8.219 ms
15 host86-161-*-*.range86-161.btcentralplus.com (86.161.*.*) 10.412 ms 10.146 ms 10.472 ms

Sorry for the bad layout from the Blizzard Server to my connection, that's how it looked on the terminal / console.

It also seems my connection is using LINX1 (London Internet Exchange Ltd)

Paul

Ah, fair enough.

Here's mine, what a mess. LOL.

tracert www.google.com

Tracing route to www.google.com [2a00:1450:400b:c00::69]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms broadband.bt.com [2a00:23c3:2a77:d900:924d:4aff:fe0a:aac1]
2 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 2a00:2302::8:201:1e
3 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 2a00:2302::8:0:37f
4 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 2a00:2302::8:100
5 34 ms 31 ms 33 ms 2a00:23a0:11:c::3
6 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 2a00:23a0:11:5::3
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 2a00:2380:300e:2001::1a
8 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-13-0-11.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [2a00:2380:4::14a]
9 26 ms 23 ms 23 ms peer1-xe9-0-0.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [2a00:2380:4::95]
10 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms 2a00:2380:2010:1000:
11 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms 2001:4860:0:1103::2
12 33 ms 33 ms 33 ms 2607:f8b0:e000:8000::6
13 33 ms 34 ms 33 ms 2001:4860::1:0:b04f
14 33 ms 33 ms 33 ms 2001:4860::2:0:b051
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms dg-in-x69.1e100.net [2a00:1450:400b:c00::69]

Trace complete.

Try the following line on the command prompt:

tracert -4 www.google.co.uk

It will use IPv4 instead of IPv6 and "might" have a lower ping.

Those timeouts might be due to those servers don't reply to pings / traceroute requests.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Sun 04-Feb-18 12:25:34)

Here we are:

tracert -4 www.google.co.uk

Tracing route to www.google.co.uk [209.85.202.94]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms bthub [192.168.1.254]
2 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 217.32.147.108
3 194 ms 53 ms 49 ms 217.32.147.174
4 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms 212.140.206.90
5 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.180.171
6 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.179.83
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms acc2-xe-2-1-2.sf.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.255.225]
8 25 ms 22 ms 23 ms core1-te0-4-0-2.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.251.129]
9 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms peer5-te-0-9-0-14.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.67]
10 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 109.159.253.67
11 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms 108.170.246.143
12 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 216.239.57.237
13 32 ms 32 ms 32 ms 209.85.255.212
14 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms 216.239.46.18
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 28 ms 28 ms 29 ms dg-in-f94.1e100.net [209.85.202.94]

Trace complete.

Got nothing but good things to say about Uno Broadband on the TTB Backhaul for gaming. 15-16ms to london.

Like other user said don't be drawn in by ISP's with gaming packages usually it is nothing but a name nothing is actually tailored for onl-ine gaming.

Plusnet had the lowest latency for me 14ms (Central Scotland). But suffered severe congestion in the evenings and had packetloss issues all of which no matter how much you speak to support never get resolved.


At least with uno I feel they are competent enough company with good support and will address issues if they are on their end.