Why is Virgin Media so bad for ping?

Let me explain my situation. I'm an avid League of Legends plays and I've lived in Guildford for many years. I used to get 14ms to EUW server using the University broadband.

I've moved to Woking recently and got the most expensive Virgin Media contract (still got a few days to cancel). My download/upload speed are fine BUT my ping to EUW is 28ms, DOUBLE the one in Guildford which is 2 miles away.

The sad thing is that my ping using the BT HOTSPOT WIFI in my new house is 23ms. Is Virgin media really this bad for gaming? I spoke to them and they say they can't do anything because it's a "high utilisation" area...

Hi

Have you noticed an appreciable effect whilst playing?

I would posit that it's not the small ping increase that's the issue. More likely Virgin's admission that you're in a "high utilisation" area. Try the thinkbroadband speed tester and note the buffer bloat results. You could have the fastest gaming router set up in the world, but if the delays are ISP side you won't be able to odds it.

I'm not familiar with Virgin. Do they supply a router? Either way, make sure you have QOS active in the router settings (if you haven't already).

With the Virgin network they tend to either be really good or really bad depending on the area people are in, If you are in a "high utilisation" area as they put it then it can get seriously bad, I personally know people who have had 50meg lines that have pings well into the hundreds with jitter and download speeds of under 2meg.
One of them had a 20meg line in one area and it worked perfect for them so when they moved to another area they ordered virgin again right away because of it, The problem was though that it was a "high utilisation" area and as such it was unusable for what they wanted, There was a facebook page setup and residents were going to have a demonstration/protest outside of the Exeter branch years ago but Virgin relented and decided to buy more bandwidth for the area and all was good for a while until again.. too many people/downloads maxed out the bandwidth and the speeds reduced to a crawl again.

TBH your ping doesn't appear that bad at the moment for normal day web browsing etc but obviously that's not what you want to just use it for.
As MrNelster has said you really want to make a note of the jitter/bufferbloat as that's what causes noticeable lag/freezes when playing a game, a 24ping 1 jitter service will be a lot better than a 14ping that has 45jitter every now and again for instance.

Personally though after seeing the horror stories from my friends in "high utilisation" areas on the virgin network I would run away from them if you are in a HU area.