How far do I need to live from Docklands to get 1ms

I was looking at making a house move in the coming year and was just curious how far would I need to live from Docklands (or would it be Slough) to get 1ms or lower latency on London gaming servers for Steam / BattleNet games and or Google servers.

I know it might sound silly but I was just curious as to how these things work and how far out one can go from these main internet exchanges before going past the 1ms mark.

Thanks

If you've a leased line with a really direct route Reading at least is fine.

If you've Virgin Media cable you could be next door to their equipment in Poplar and you're still not getting 1 ms. All about how you're getting onto the provider's network and how direct it is. Hyperoptic are very good with their FTTB, most full fibre you'd need to be pretty close as just to get to the 'exchange' is a little over a millisecond round trip: not much time to get to the server left before you're above 2.

If you're inside the M25 and on the right provider you're probably going to make it as long as the app rounds down, not to the actual nearest number.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Sun 30-Apr-23 14:36:28)

Yeah I reckon you’ll push to get under 1ms. More than likely 2ms. Not so much distance in London but network configurations, router hops and peering config that will drive the delay.

Are you really going to notice the difference between 1ms and 3ms in the real world? You’re gaming not high frequency trading at the end of the day.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yeah I reckon you’ll push to get under 1ms. More than likely 2ms. Not so much distance in London but network configurations, router hops and peering config that will drive the delay.

Very true and part of why I mentioned Hyperoptic's FTTB - it's not a shared network at the access layer so no need to wait.

Even over XGSPON the first hop is over a millisecond for obvious reasons - takes a little while to get a timeslot to send. This is to a router next to the OLT that serves me, less than 2 km away straight line and about 3 by road and likely fibre route.

Packets: sent=4, rcvd=4, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 1.509285 sec
RTTs in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 1.071 / 1.191 / 1.327 / 0.096
Bandwidth in kbytes/sec: sent=0.159, rcvd=0.159

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Sun 30-Apr-23 14:46:19)

In reply to a post by Supermax:

before going past the 1ms mark.

Thanks

Whilst having the smallest latency as possible helps [alot in games] and you can reduce that by mouse/ram/gfx/keyboard/internet/monitor. Sometimes the server is [censored] or the game could be badly optimised.

Or you have a bad game plan. but the worst, is when you are unwell.

The above is about the fact sometimes its a bit of everything and don't chase the poster graphics of 1ms

I stand corrected. With a voice call and a game running it drops notably as the voice and game are taking care of reserving the bandwidth.

From 45.92.47.33: bytes=60 seq=0001 TTL=254 ID=d239 time=1.005ms
From 45.92.47.33: bytes=60 seq=0002 TTL=254 ID=d23a time=1.001ms
From 45.92.47.33: bytes=60 seq=0003 TTL=254 ID=d23b time=0.814ms
From 45.92.47.33: bytes=60 seq=0004 TTL=254 ID=d23c time=0.836ms

Packets: sent=4, rcvd=4, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 1.507531 sec
RTTs in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 0.814 / 0.914 / 1.005 / 0.089

In reply to a post by Taras:

Whilst having the smallest latency as possible helps [alot in games] and you can reduce that by mouse/ram/gfx/keyboard/internet/monitor. Sometimes the server is [censored] or the game could be badly optimised.

Should we also be starting to factor in that a Human Eye blinks at 0.1-0.4 sec each time and we blink around 20 times a min....so maybe us mere humans by design are also part of latency.

There really are more important things in life and certainly better places to live.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Whilst having the smallest latency as possible helps [alot in games] and you can reduce that by mouse/ram/gfx/keyboard/internet/monitor. Sometimes the server is [censored] or the game could be badly optimised.

Should we also be starting to factor in that a Human Eye blinks at 0.1-0.4 sec each time and we blink around 20 times a min....so maybe us mere humans by design are also part of latency.

i think we should or do so. Tbf, i was annoyed that it was about the 1ms thing, and whilst the OP is valid one it it was like the headline thing you hear. And in my head i was like "well theres other issues here too".

In reply to a post by dect:

There really are more important things in life and certainly better places to live.

Lifestyle choice eh. I understand the OP was in Knutsford based on previous threads. Seems a pretty nice place overall, but who knows.