Best ping FTTP ISP from Manchester - BT vs Aquiss vs Zen ?

Hi all, I have been browsing this forum for years but today is my first time signing up and raising questions!

I'm from Manchester, was using Hyperoptic in my last place and the ping time can be as low as 1-3ms which is fantastic.
However I recently moved to a place which doesn't have Hyperoptic FTTH/FTTB coverage but Openreach FTTP, so I'm trying to find out which ISP provides the best ping?

For BT FTTP, I'm aware of the ping time to bbc.co.uk from Manchester currently sits at 10-20ms, depending the tier of services you're using (yes, 36Mbps has much higher ping time than 330Mbps!).
But how about other FTTP ISPs? Aquiss and Zen are on my list, I personally preferred to Aquiss as it's cheaper... but seems Zen has direct links from Manchester which is very attractive too!

Any thoughts from anyone? Or anyone can share their ping times of Aquiss and/or Zen for comparison? Cheers all

Edited by guyinman (Wed 08-Apr-20 12:14:08)

Here's mine from Aquiss on FTTP 3 80/20

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 9ms

Ping to what? Where you are pinging is key to the question. If on Hyperoptic you were pinging London from Manchester then I think you would have been breaking some rules of physics to do it in 1-3ms. It is possible that on Hyperoptic doing a ping was pinging a local server close to Manchester to be able to get pings that low.

The question of where you are pinging is important. If pinging something in London then it wouldn't matter if the main link connection for the ISP was in Manchester or London as it would still take about the same time - but if you were pinging something in Manchester and the internet main link was in London then the ping would have to travel to London and then back to Manchester meaning a longer transit.

Also, if pinging US then some ISPs might have better routes than others. And those routes may dynamically change depending on Internet usage and line conditions.

Are you in Manchester? If not you would need to say where in the country you are as locations are critical in ping times.

In reply to a post by boysteve:

Here's mine from Aquiss on FTTP 3 80/20

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 9ms

Thanks! Which city are you from?

Edited by guyinman (Wed 08-Apr-20 11:57:56)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Ping to what? Where you are pinging is key to the question. If on Hyperoptic you were pinging London from Manchester then I think you would have been breaking some rules of physics to do it in 1-3ms. It is possible that on Hyperoptic doing a ping was pinging a local server close to Manchester to be able to get pings that low.

The question of where you are pinging is important. If pinging something in London then it wouldn't matter if the main link connection for the ISP was in Manchester or London as it would still take about the same time - but if you were pinging something in Manchester and the internet main link was in London then the ping would have to travel to London and then back to Manchester meaning a longer transit.

Also, if pinging US then some ISPs might have better routes than others. And those routes may dynamically change depending on Internet usage and line conditions.

Let's treat bbc.co.uk or google.co.uk as reference - don't worry about overseas traffic

The problem with BT is, it's always connecting to the Docklands (London) before going anywhere else. This cause extra delays of ~10ms (even more if you are at Scotland).

In reply to a post by ian72:

Are you in Manchester? If not you would need to say where in the country you are as locations are critical in ping times.

Yes I do. That's why a local server will be ideal, who likes the traffic all the way to London!

So the consideration to get you maximum speed is going to be only ISPs that have a dropout in or near Manchester to minimise any extra traffic. However, as most servers are probably based in London then for practical purposes it wouldn't make much difference.

The other thing to consider around type of traffic is the ISPs that have content distribution networks. If you are using things like Netflix then with an ISP like BT the service will mostly come from a much closer CDN rather than going to the main servers.

Low ping really doesn't mean much unless there is a specific service you need a low ping on. Gaming generally if you ping is really low tends to have built in delays to ensure that people on a very low latency don't get an advantage over the "average" latency player.

So, what services are you using specifically that you need low latency for and it is those you need to be testing - pinging bbc or google doesn't really tell you anything about real world performance.

In reply to a post by ian72:

So the consideration to get you maximum speed is going to be only ISPs that have a dropout in or near Manchester to minimise any extra traffic. However, as most servers are probably based in London then for practical purposes it wouldn't make much difference.

You're correct! What I'd like to find out is whether Aquiss or Zen has a better optimisation of traffic (without necessarily going via London).

Asking for google and bbc comparisons is a waste of time since they use multiple hosts rather than www.bbc.co.uk for example a single server based in London.

Curious about the idea that icmp ping is noticeably different between the 40/10 service and the faster variants. If looking at latency people are posting in speed tests that is likely to be the case as these invariably show a return trip time for a small TCP packet.