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Finally after years of being on virgin I can see the Openreach is installing fibre in my neighbourhood. with bidb saying their installation worksing starting from 24-26 of this month. I was curious as to what openreach ISP would be best for me just outside manchester exclusively to gaming servers of major games such as Warzone, CSGO, Fornite, Apex legends, World of Warcraft etc. I know the key locations for them are London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt.
Is there a way for me to check which isp would be best to choose for my given location to get the lowest latency or do I just go with anyone with the cheapest pricing model since they will all be on openreach. Also since I am in Manchester would the be any specific openreach ISP which would give me the strongest routing?
I still have a bit of time to decide judging by all the installation posts on thinkbroadband but I just wanted to do my research beforehand so that I can place the right order when the time comes.
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So you gave up on London, and also the 0ms outside of london projects .........
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Life and plans dont always work out how you want them. But what I can control is what ISP i choose! 
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Register (or login) on our website and you will not see this ad.
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I've always found BT routing/latency to be excellent, I get 14/15ms to London from Northern Ireland
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I am getting 7ms pings from the Stockport area according to the f8lure.mouselike.org latency monitoring. i am with AAISP on a BTw backhaul.
I was seeing 9 or 10ms on my previous IDNET connection with ZenW backhaul for comparison.
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nice - what are you pinging to bbc.co.uk , google.co.uk and amazon.co.uk?
Im respectively at 16, 13 and 26 with virgin currently from Knutsford.
Im trying to figure out how to run your test but am unfamiliar with it.
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thanks mate. I am leaning towards BT but am intriguied by the services offered by the smaller ISPs who are on the openreach platform to see if they are better suited for my needs.
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I can’t check until next weekend, but will let you know then.
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Have a look at Aquiss. I'm with them, based around 15 miles north west of Manchester and on a good game on MW2 can ping at 9ms, typically hovers around 10-15ms. I was on VM until recently and a 'good' ping would be 30ms.
https://www.aquiss.net/unlimited-fttp-fibre-broadband/
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This looks like a winner so far! Would love to see those pings in games.
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definitely keen to see your results and I'll pull the plug on either AAISP or Aquiss
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Sky G.fast so would be just under 2ms lower on fttp im in Cardiff so about 140 miles away from linx
Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=60
Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 6ms, Average = 5ms
First external hop after the cabinet
Pinging 2.127.238.243 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2.127.238.243: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=63
Reply from 2.127.238.243: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=63
Reply from 2.127.238.243: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=63
Reply from 2.127.238.243: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=63
Ping statistics for 2.127.238.243:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 2ms, Average = 1ms
Its usually around 1.8ms in linux
a friend who is in scotland i get just under 9ms to him he has the same setup as me
and about 3.6ms is the first hop both ways
Sky have an a1 backbone though they have been bought by comcast so i am keeping an eye out
for degradation
Also there's no pppoe its just straight ethernet with a dhcp option flag which helps
Like so
Edited by Shonk (Tue 25-Jul-23 18:34:47)
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holy smokes those results look nice! Great time to be a consumer!
Really note sure which route to go as multiple options seem nice.
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You'd probably get more tangible gains from servers with a higher tick rate (at least where they exist) than you will giving yourself an aneurysm looking for an ISP that has reliably low latency.
Not sure how much latency impacts PvP in WoW, but it has little to no impact in PvE unless the whole server is lagging, but that's another issue. So, apart from CS:Go, the games you've referenced apparently only have a 20 to 30 /sec tick rate. Meaning 33 to 50 ms additional time for the game servers to realise/process yours or your opponents actions. Therefore, if you manage to find a connection that reliably reduces your latency by say 5ms (e.g from 15ms down to 10ms) then you're impacting the effective latency in most of the games by ~10 to 15%. Whereas a tick rate increase from 20/s to 64/s would reduce the effective latency by 35ms. All for free.
Edited by Noolah (Wed 26-Jul-23 10:43:56)
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If you're an actual or wannabe professional gamer I guess the lower your latency the less chance there is of your actions falling through to the next tick due to delay.
Although if getting that extreme and playing on nearby servers input latency on the PC is also a major issue.
720p all settings low, all driver optimisations on for everyone!
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YouFibre uncapped via Mikrotik CHR. Faelix via Mikrotik RB5009.
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Whereabouts in Manchester are you?
I ask because BRSK broadband have been rapidly building their network here. We switched to them from Virgin a couple of weeks ago and have to say am very impressed.
We get 1Gig upload and download for £30/month.
The customer service is excellent - always managed to speak to someone helpful straightaway.
And they're currently offering £75 Amazon voucher if you sign up via this link: https://brsk.uk/3VP4
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Brsk looks great but unfortunately doesn't look anywhere close to my area. My only options are Openreach based ISPs. Just had the engineers install up to the post in front of my house. Just waiting to see how long it takes for me to be able to place an order.
All the options mentioned here seem great. So looking forward to moving on from Virgin soon hopefully!
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nice - what are you pinging to bbc.co.uk , google.co.uk and amazon.co.uk?
Im respectively at 16, 13 and 26 with virgin currently from Knutsford.
Im trying to figure out how to run your test but am unfamiliar with it.
--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 7.090/7.995/8.918/0.634 ms
--- google.co.uk ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 7.713/8.567/9.584/0.636 ms
--- amazon.co.uk ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 18.664/19.401/20.463/0.583 ms
The f8lure ping monitor is here: https://f8lure.mouselike.org. Just set up an account and monitor your connection. I just use it as a comparison to the TBB BQM.
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Thank you Jaydub - that's literally half of what I get currently. Impressive. I've narrowed my search down to Aquiss and A&A. Will pull the plug on one of them as soon as I get the go ahead from openreach. Thank you everyone for your input. Appreciate your time.
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I very much doubt there is a notable difference from any ISP given they likely all backhaul the traffic to London before you even reach the ISP.
Edited by alexatkin (Tue 01-Aug-23 17:12:41)
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I very much doubt there is a notable difference from any ISP given they likely all backhaul the traffic to London before you even reach the ISP. Assuming using Openreach either VDSL/FTTC or FTTP, they connect you to one of their regional exchanges, and then hand you over to a network provider, often BTwholesale, whom have various handover points around the country. The ISP you choose then connects to BTwholesale in varoius locations.
So no, its not all London centric as many assume. Talk to the chosen ISP and find out how they connect, if they don't answer, try another one.
23 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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Other than Zen and Manchester are you aware of any BT Wholesale customer of any scale that uses WMBC and doesn't have all their NNIs in the south-east?
I'm not aware of any provider using WBC at all. Providers large enough to justify it either don't use BT Wholesale at all, they go to Openreach direct, or in the case of BT/EE use Broadband Complete.
If using WMBC you're paying Wholesale the same whether the data is on their network for one kilometre or three hundred so may as well use them to get as close to as much of the wider Internet as possible and save having to backhaul the data yourself: most of it is going through London anyway.
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YouFibre uncapped via Mikrotik CHR. Faelix via Mikrotik RB5009.
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I spoke to Aquiss a couple of months ago and they've just opened a new data centre in Pendlebury, not far outside of Manchester. They said that there is a huge amount of capacity up north compared to down south. They posted about the migration a few weeks ago at the link below, second resolved issue:
https://ebilling.aquiss.net/serverstatus.php?view=re...
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I just need to add here, before it causes any confusion, the Manchester migration move was to move our hosting servers into a new datacentre and has no relation at all to broadband services.
Martin Pitt
Managing Director
Aquiss Limited
https://www.aquiss.net
SoGEA, FTTP, FTTH, Leased Lines, Telecoms and Hosting |
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The above post has been made by an ISP REPRESENTATIVE (although not necessarily the ISP being discussed in the post).
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You have to think about where the outbound connections you're making are going though, to decide if this is all worth it. I'm sure this is fairly obvious stuff but having an ISP with gateways in Manchester is only going to be of any value to you if the stuff you want to access is peered there and hosted locally. Anything coming out of a CDN doesn't care whether your latency is 5ms or 25ms, so really you're left with things like having regional offices on a VPN using the same ISP so their traffic isn't going via London if the locations are in Leeds and Manchester, maybe some staff working from home will pick the same provider and all your corporate resources are available within 10ms.
The UK isn't really big enough for this to be a problem IMO. I have two sites round the corner from each other in Leicestershire on different ISPs, and a VPN tunnel (via London) still has them within 15ms of each other. If I was really worried about latency I'd get a point-to-point service installed and have sub 1ms, because by the time you're adding internet levels of latency you're already ruling out running things like SMB.
By the time we're up in Edinburgh and Aberdeen I can see the argument for Scottish traffic staying in Scotland wherever possible, and I wouldn't want stuff from Belfast coming to London before going back, but Manchester isn't enough ms away for me to be concerned.
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I'm on BT in N.Ireland and my connection exits in London, so anywhere else (Manchester) is extra latency.
When I had VM, it would exit at Manchester but the latency was 10ms+
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Im just trying to get any incremental benefit over virgin that I can get. If im potentially get half the latency at the same or lower price then why not? (thats my thought process).
My only use is for servers in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. From all that im reading so far is that the BT infrastructure should be better for me. getting 25-30ms to London while being in Manchester doesn't seem ideal.
Judging by the information provided by other users in the same location as me if that can be lowered to 10-15ms then its defo worth the switch for me. Also goes to when im playing with my friends in Canada / USA. When we play together Im usually at about 110-120ms on Virgin whereas friends who are on BT are on 80ms while being based in Leicester.
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Unless you're playing competitive e-sports titles like CS:GO or Valorant then the latency of a connection is largely irrelevant for anything sub 40/50ms IMHO.
If you're playing COD, LoL etc than your connection is only as fast latency wise as the slowest connection again latency wise on the session you're connected to. Those games have dynamic latency management in place to ensure relative parity and thus no competitive advantage.
I see frequently in the communities of those games and its a tad frustrating.
Now someone is no doubt gonna caveat what I've just said and come back with something that is latency sensitive......but this is gaming we're talking about here not trying to land a drone on the other side of the world.
Regards
JM
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Other than Zen and Manchester are you aware of any BT Wholesale customer of any scale that uses WMBC and doesn't have all their NNIs in the south-east? Zen are also a weird case, as whenever I've had the misfortune to route via Manchester, despite being in Sheffield so it should get to Zen quicker, latency has been worse as it seems all peering is in London anyway.
I'm honestly curious how much infrastructure ISPs even use locally these days as surely its not necessary for traffic to ever go to an ISPs physical location when it can be routed from London directly, and faster.
In Zens case they offer co-location themselves so my guess is practically nothing actually related to being an ISP is handled in their HQ, its their other services which are.
Many years ago I was on Origin Broadband when it first formed on the Digital Region network. That WAS local and the only benefit was peer to peer with a friend on the same network was insanely low latency, and that I leased a VPS in the same local data centre they were using for peering.
Their latency to the Internet however was never that great and when they moved to Openreach both speed and latency were consistently worse than other ISPs.
Edited by alexatkin (Fri 11-Aug-23 10:49:03)
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Just to give you guys an update for anyone that is interested at all. I switched over to BT Openreach and now get the below pings:
bbc.co.uk - Virgin: 16ms - BT: 7ms
google.co.uk Virgin: 13ms - BT: 6ms
amazon.co.uk Virgin 26ms - BT: 17ms
All my latency in games such as CS GO / COD Warzone / World of Warcraft / Dota 2 etc have dropped by almost 30-50% across the board.
Extremely happy with my switch.
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Obviously for WoW it won't matter but has it made any difference to the FPS games?
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Ok - this is going to sound corny but the first day of switching to Openreach I dropped my first ever nuke in MW2 and second day dropedd a 38 kill win in CS2. Could just be a coincidence ofcourse but I'm happy and that's all that matters. 
Edited by Supermax (Thu 16-Nov-23 14:23:57)
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