BT FTTP vs Hyperoptic FTTP

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?

Yes, I have to say, I'm not impressed with the "high" ping on Openreach FTTP. Should be in the low single figures, not in the 10s, I wonder why this is!

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Yes, I have to say, I'm not impressed with the "high" ping on Openreach FTTP. Should be in the low single figures, not in the 10s, I wonder why this is!

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

Another family member of mine tells me they live near a data centre and gets around 1MS and 3MS on a bad day on one of the FTTP providers, can't remember who.

I happen to get sub-3ms on BT to teh BT servers and maybe 2ms to TBB

However, ping is a false metric and should nlot be used to compare services unless you are using te same test point. You realistically need two neighbours one on BT and one on Hyperoptic and then test to TBB or a specific speedtest.net server (or several).

Edited by MHC (Sat 02-Oct-21 20:20:54)

W1234TJ

You have to take location into account, many Hyperoptic customers are in and around London so very low pings to London based speed testers.

BT's FTTP customers are mainly remote from London, some in NI and Scotland, distance then starts to affect pings significantly. If in Scotland you add 10ms just for distance without taking any additional switching into account. NI can be even more due to the subsea links adding extra distance.

No Scottish customer can get less than 10ms to London regardless of ISP.

Where in the country are you?

What kitkat said

I'm from london and planning to get openreach FTTP as it is the only FTTP available in my area

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Yes, I have to say, I'm not impressed with the "high" ping on Openreach FTTP. Should be in the low single figures, not in the 10s, I wonder why this is!

If your testing against a server that is located outside your own location of Devon will be the first factor.

I would be surprised if the majority of ISPs didn't send Devon to Devon traffic via their core (more likely London) anyway.

In reply to a post by E1234TJ:

I'm from london and planning to get openreach FTTP as it is the only FTTP available in my area

And you will be perfectly happy with it.

I'm in Kent and get 5ms to 8.8.8.8 via Cerberus over Openreach FTTP. But if it were 20ms I wouldn't notice the difference.

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.

In reply to a post by E300:

The best test is to ping your gateway, as everything goes via that gateway, this is the minimum latency you can achieve.

One thing to note is that routers tend to prioritise traffic that flows through it, rather than to it, so the ping to a gateway might not necessarily be a lower bound.

Jumping on with more anecdotal results, I have both Hyperoptic (500/500) and Openreach FTTP (40/10) at my flat in London.

Pinging Google DNS (8.8.8.8) on Hyperoptic, I get

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 received, 0% packet loss, time 140ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.520/1.451/17.573/2.265 ms

And on Openreach, I get

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 received, 0% packet loss, time 624ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 3.009/3.947/21.666/0.650 ms

A traceroute with Hyperoptic shows that I stay within Hyperoptic's internal network and end up in Google's network at 209.85.248.229, and on Openreach I'm routed via the Poplar exchange, Telehouse, Volta, and then LONAP.

Subjectively, I can achieve much lower latencies on Hyperoptic, but the Hyperoptic connection tends to be under contention a lot more, resulting in much more variable latency, and the occasional packet loss.

And if you want to look at BQM graphs, Hyperoptic and Openreach FTTP - ignore the spikes every 30 minutes, that's due to bufferbloat when speedtests are ran.

My experience with Hyperoptic is that if you aren't accessing something that is on a network they are peered with then you go out over absolutely garbage quality transit. IPv6 last time I checked was all HE which was terrible.

In reply to a post by jscheah:

Pinging Google DNS (8.8.8.8) on Hyperoptic, I get

What is the difference like for something that is not anycast? e.g. bbc.co.uk

I'm on a mobile 4G connection at the moment, but:
Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 57ms, Average = 30ms

In reply to a post by gary333:

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.

The vast majority of servers I ping that are located in London give me a roughly 14ms response.
No matter what I ping I cannot get a response below 13.7ms.
Several servers give me a 13.7ms response.
From that I can conclude my minimum latency is 13.7ms

I'm in the Edinburgh area, so that's about right.

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.

Virgin Media have Speedtest.net servers "on net", within their network.

I could get 7ms pings from my home to Virgins Edinburgh test server.
However it appears ALL of Virgins traffic goes through London.
Apart from the Virgin Speedtest servers, all of my Virgin traffic had a minimum latency of 20ms.

Quite a few providers have similar setups.
All their traffic goes through London, but you can get lower pings from their on net speedtest servers than you can from any general internet traffic.

Virgin Media have Speedtest.net servers "on net", within their network.

Hi just wanted to let you know that virgin media removed the speedtest.net servers from their network when they released the "HUB 4" as they now advise customers to go to samknows realspeed.
I have a "HUB 3" and CS say go to realspeed and then i go it says error, presumably because its not a "samknows realspeed" enabled router. I mean it's fine after as they use the speed test results' but when engineers come they complain and say the tests are not on virgins network.

I will say however I found virgin's speedtest servers to have higher latency than some that were further away from their network.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

I will say however I found virgin's speedtest servers to have higher latency than some that were further away from their network.

Virgin's domestic network is, I understand, rather complicated and segmented.

I never understood having speedtest servers on the ISP network, unless all the content people want to get to is also on the ISP network. (with CDN's some might be, but not all). For that reason I don't see the point in Samknows Realspeed.

Better to download some files from a well connected site, e.g. the UK mirror service, or a microsoft ISO, or a Red Hat image, etc.

If punters challenge performance VM can point to SKR as an 'independent' arbiter. Paints a veneer of credibility.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

If punters challenge performance VM can point to SKR as an 'independent' arbiter. Paints a veneer of credibility.

Shame they can’t retro fit it to the Hub 3 then! That veneer is a molecule thin!

I can see the value in the RealSpeed test for very quickly being able to rule in or out the VM DOCSIS network. If you have a gig service and RealSpeed shows 300Mbps to the cable modem then it should be an open and shut case that you have a fault that isn’t your problem.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I can see the value in the RealSpeed test for very quickly being able to rule in or out the VM DOCSIS network. If you have a gig service and RealSpeed shows 300Mbps to the cable modem then it should be an open and shut case that you have a fault that isn’t your problem

Admittedly I quite like the idea of samknows realspeed for this as it helps save time trying three different pc's on different os's every time there is a problem so CS believe me.
Its like they go "there is no problem" at the start and by the end they are like "there is very huge problem sir", "I need to speak to manager to see what i can do" then they are like "I can give you exclusive discount just for you sir so you don't raise a ticket with the ofcom"
those are actual quotes from the recorded conversations with Virgin Media from a GDPR data request.

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Tue 05-Oct-21 22:55:48)

In reply to a post by jpm:

I can see the value in the RealSpeed test for very quickly being able to rule in or out the VM DOCSIS network. If you have a gig service and RealSpeed shows 300Mbps to the cable modem then it should be an open and shut case that you have a fault that isn’t your problem.

Almost a physical plant test? As we've seen in the past on VM (and NTL) networks you can have full speed over the ISP network, but half that speed to any internet site, UK or global.