I average 15-16ms in N.Ireland on FTTP. was around 18-21ms on FTTC

That's to London btw.

Edited by BuckleZ (Sun 03-Oct-21 00:16:27)

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

I average 15-16ms in N.Ireland on FTTP. was around 18-21ms on FTTC

That's to London btw.

Unless people are measuring ping to the exact same server then I don’t get how anyone can be so confident they know how much their ping varies. Things like google dns could be spread across multiple data centres.

For example I get a 11ms ping on Virgin media to TNP in Manchester. I presume they have something to do with Virgin media as every other server in Manchester (via Speedtest.net) ranges from 19-29ms), with the majority being mid 20’s. Manchester is about 50 miles from me, yet servers around the corner can’t get anywhere near 11ms that I can get for this single company’s servers in Manchester. Servers a quarter of the distance from me still take mid 20’s. London is 150 miles away yet I get a ping of 18ms via structured communication.

In reply to a post by Grimers:

I know right, even one of my family members on BT FTTC get less than 10MS, normally around 5-8MS

This is what I typically get. 5-10ms for most servers in London and 3-5ms for anything hosted internally in BT's network (e.g Akamai, Google Video servers, etc).

True, but even so, I have tested many different domains/servers and I've never seen anything lower than 7ms.

I’m on Full Fibre 100 on BT (160/30) in a village outside Basingstoke and I typically see 4ms to my default Speedtest.net server in Portsmouth.

I’m using a Fritz!Box 7490 configured with QoS and wifi mesh 802.11ac (Wifi-5) to three strategically located APs using gigabit Ethernet backhaul. I don’t have anything wired nowadays.

I just ran a test, throughout is lower because my kids are gaming and the TVs are streaming: but ping and jitter are perfect:

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4794301874

This is a BT FTTP result:

https://www.speedtest.net/result/12128417956

305/48 on a 300/50 service using WiFi and teh server - "the optimum" is at least 150 miles away proably 250 with routing.

In reply to a post by E1234TJ:

I've been looking at BT Full Fibre FTTP speedtests on youtube and all of them have above 10 milliseconds ping (some going up to 40ms even on a wired ethernet connection). If I search for a hyperoptic speed test all of the videos have under 3ms.

Are these all just special cases or can I expect the same ping with BT FTTP as hyperoptic?

The moral of the story is don’t believe that all the (expletive) on YouTube is representative of what you will receive in your particular situation.

As you are London based, your ping times will be comparably low if connecting to speedtest servers that are likely to be hosted in various London-based datacentres.

Personally I would not think that you would be able to distinguish the likely sub 2-to 3 ms difference between an Openreach FTTP service and that from Hyperoptic. There are other more significant factors which you should be evaluating your decision on.

Grimers

This is correct for where in the country you are.

Take 3-5ms switching delay as a minimum. .

Road distance is around 220m so Transmission distance is likely to be greater than 300m / 500Km. Speed of light in fibre is approx 70% of Light in a vacuum so assume 7.5ms per 1000km so 3.75ms.

It is likely to be higher than this as the transmission route is likely via Bristol, or a zigzag path along the south coast.

Min is around 7ms for you, likely is closer to 10ms.

The best test is to ping your gateway, as everything goes via that gateway, this is the minimum latency you can achieve. Typically ISPs have their gateways in London data centres, so pinging most London servers will not add very much more to this baseline.

For example, my ping to my gateway is currently 6ms from the East Midlands. If I ping from an Azure virtual machine hosted in the "UK South" so I assume London, to my own router, I get 7 to 8ms. That means the Azure virtual machine is taking up to 2ms extra to get to/from me compared to pinging my gateway. Sure enough, if I ping my gateway from the Azure virtual machine, it takes just 1-2ms*. So that basically confirms my ISPs gateway is in London somewhere hence the short pings between the gateway and a London hosted Azure virtual machine. Therefore all pings to London based servers will be 6ms plus a couple more for me, but could never be better than 6ms.

This is great when servers are in London, but if I was to access servers in Manchester for example, I still go via the gateway in London, so in that case having a low latency to London doesn't help, as I'm setting off in the wrong direction and have to double back.

*In 1-2ms you can travel quite a distance in a cable, and for short trips the delays are mostly related to passing through additional routers and switches.

Edited by E300 (Sun 03-Oct-21 15:52:05)

I like the idea of pinging a server on the edge of BT's network (e.g the Steam Akamai server steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net is a machine at the edge of BT's network if you are using their DNS) because this shows the theoretical latency if you could somehow move the server out of its London data centre and into the edge of your ISP.

In my case it will never be better than 3-5ms worth of delay so we can deduce from this that accessing anything over the Internet will take at least 3-5ms as a best-case scenario but likely more due to the extra routing and switching delay as traffic transits between different providers.