FTTP ISPs - Northern Ireland

I've recently paid Cerberus for a FTTPoD install (£15,600 quote, £3,800 confirmed build charges, for those interested), so I'll hopefully have a service go live with them sometime soon(ish). However, as an aside, they've got over 50% of the route cabled already and I paid them less than 3 weeks ago. They're installing a carriageway box today as well - certainly not wasting any time... yet!

Until that goes in, I have two load balanced VDSL lines with BT and Zen. Neither of these lines are interleaved, and are on G.INP high so what I'm dealing with on the copper side is relatively equal. However, when I'm running speed tests, the latency reported with the BT one is typically around 9-10ms lower than the Zen one. My guess is that this has something to do with BT having infrastructure in Northern Ireland, whereas Zen's is all based in Manchester or London. I play online games, mostly on servers based in the US and the latency is already horrible enough, even to the east coast. If I could lower this based on ISP choice, I'd be happy to explore this.

Evidently, this is nowhere near my area of expertise and I have no idea where to look to even begin trying to find out which would be the best ISP for this given my location... or if it even makes a difference and the results I see are down to something else entirely! Can anyone provide me with some enlightenment?

Thanks!

I thought with Cerberus you were tied to them for the first three years or something?

No it is now one year for FTTPoD.

I'm not sure anyone would be able to give you the detailed answer you want as there are so many variables.

Some ISP's will have their VDSL2 customers and FTTP/G.Fast customers handled completely different.

Zen for example may have an LLU presence at your local exchange for their FTTC customers but any Ultrafast customers might be on a different backhaul with completely different peering.

Presumably you'll be with Cerberus for a minimum of 12 months anyway.
In a years time when you switch ISP the routing/backhaul of many ISP's might have changed, particularly as the Ultrafast packages mature.

I did wonder. But even so, it�s a bit early to be wondering about which ISP to go for. I suspect the OP didn�t realise this. Unless the whole thing is different in NI.

In reply to a post by lcl00:

I have two load balanced VDSL lines with BT and Zen. Neither of these lines are interleaved, and are on G.INP high so what I'm dealing with on the copper side is relatively equal. However, when I'm running speed tests, the latency reported with the BT one is typically around 9-10ms lower than the Zen one. My guess is that this has something to do with BT having infrastructure in Northern Ireland, whereas Zen's is all based in Manchester or London. I play online games, mostly on servers based in the US and the latency is already horrible enough, even to the east coast. If I could lower this based on ISP choice, I'd be happy to explore this.

What actually matters to you is latency to the game servers, not latency to the local speed test servers.

Suppose BT have a connection to an internet exchange in Northern Ireland, and there's a speedtest server there - then yes, you'll see low latency to that server. But traffic to the USA may well still go down to London and out.

A fairer test would be to select the *same* Speedtest server (you can select them manually) on both lines. Try one in or near London, and also try one in (say) New York. Just click "Change Server" then type "New York" in the search box. Pick exactly the same server each time.

You'll likely see latency around 100ms. This is purely down to physics: speed of light in fibre is about 200,000km/s, and the latency measures two trips (there and back).

It still is 12 months but once installed I'll be able to order FTTP services from other providers, and was considering doing that.

I'm aware of the massive amount of variables and was never expecting a simple or straight answer. I suppose what I need to find out is whether or not there are any ISPs based in NI who use something like Project Kelvin for US based traffic. I may be able to narrow it down a bit, but I suspect I'm going to run into a dead end again... or find a solution that is not reasonable financially.

I wouldn't place too much trust in latency results via a speedtest server. What are the differences in latency on your 2 FTTC lines, say by running the 'ping' command to thinkbroadband.com using a hardwired PC? This will give you a far better idea.

Your Cerberus FTTPoD line will be BT Wholesale backhaul based so should roughly give you similar ping times as your BT FTTC connection. Just a word of caution: don't expect massive improvement on FTTP wrt latency because contrary to popular opinion, you won't be getting single digit ping times - its usually folks living in/near London (FTTC or FTTP) who are lucky enough to get 10ms or less. That's because nearly all ISPs have their main data centres in London.

FWIW i was getting 22-23 ms to thinkbroadband via a TalkTalk 80/20 FTTC line, this is now 19-20 ms on Fluidone FTTP. I am in the Highlands.

Edited by deleted (Fri 14-Jun-19 13:14:15)

In reply to a post by lcl00:

I suppose what I need to find out is whether or not there are any ISPs based in NI who use something like Project Kelvin for US based traffic.

I think you need to ask somewhere like UKNOF.

I sounds unlikely to me that a small NI-based ISP would take a breakout at Coleraine, when transit is so cheap to buy in London - but you never know.

In reply to a post by lcl00:

I'm aware of the massive amount of variables and was never expecting a simple or straight answer. I suppose what I need to find out is whether or not there are any ISPs based in NI who use something like Project Kelvin for US based traffic. I may be able to narrow it down a bit, but I suspect I'm going to run into a dead end again... or find a solution that is not reasonable financially.

For a residential ISP extremely unlikely. Few will even know which optical path their traffic is taking across the Atlantic, they'll be paying someone else to take it there for them and interconnecting with them somewhere nearby.

Most business ISPs will be much the same. The lowest latency links will cost more and be used by financial services for high frequency trading.