New VF (City Fibre) 910 FTTP .. high ping, lowish speed

Just switched over today, from Zen FTTC 100Mbit, and initial results are disappointing.

Ok I knew the 910Mbit 'headline' speed is the best possible and not promised, but you live in hope don't you? Well I did. So the fact I get 550 over WiFi when standing next to the router means I'm much nearer the guaranteed minimum (450) than the max.

As an avid gamer, what's more concerning are the pings I'm getting ...
Google speed test, google.co.uk -- 16ms
bbc.co.uk -- 14ms
My favourite game server has almost doubled from ~22ms to 40ms

Is this going to improve as the router and line train themselves, or is that something that doesn't happen any more, and I'm stuck with these figures?


(Full disclosure: My powerline network doesn't seem to be doing me any favours as well, it was giving me the full 100 on Zen, but it's topping out at 150 now. The network in another bedroom is at 250, so perhaps I've got something happening in this room. However it doesn't alter the fact my ping doubled on that server)

Do a test when plugged into the router directly with an ethernet cable.

Depending on the WiFi hardware, 550Mbps may be the best that you'll get via WiFi

I agree. I think it's down to the wifi. Unless you have a router and wireless device running on wifi6 you'll get nowhere near fully loading your fibre. My router is 802.11ac and the fastest it can go is 433 Mbit.

Edited by Ripshod (Wed 27-Apr-22 21:51:55)

Ok thanks guys. I don't have a laptop to hand to test it out sadly.

I'm still getting the same (doubled) pings across the powerline network to the game server, so no change there. However the gaming has actually been alright - my hit-reg in battlefield 4 seems better, if anything. So perhaps it's more stable. It's a very short timescale, could just be luck :/

In reply to a post by RostokMcSpoons:

Ok thanks guys. I don't have a laptop to hand to test it out sadly.

I'm still getting the same (doubled) pings across the powerline network to the game server, so no change there. However the gaming has actually been alright - my hit-reg in battlefield 4 seems better, if anything. So perhaps it's more stable. It's a very short timescale, could just be luck :/

It might be worth mentioning that powerline's are notoriously bad for low latency and high speed.
I had one once, lets just say my latency in my internal network went from 0... - 1MS to 5MS so I would try running an ethernet cable from the router directly to the PC to see how it looks then.

I will add that my internal network looks a lot lower with cables these days.

If your an avid gamer then I’d urge you as suggested, to take the powerline segment completely out of your home network if at all possible.

Powerline Ethernet is really only good as a last resort, stop gap measure. Expecting consistent throughout and latency with powerline, especially on a very high throughput broadband connection is dubious.

The best most reliable connection; with throughput at full speed and absolute minimal latency is a wired/cabled data connection.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

It might be worth mentioning that powerline's are notoriously bad for low latency and high speed.
I had one once, lets just say my latency in my internal network went from 0... - 1MS to 5MS so I would try running an ethernet cable from the router directly to the PC to see how it looks then.

I will add that my internal network looks a lot lower with cables these days.

Ok I get the powerline isn't the ideal, but my ping before VF was a stable 22ms and now it's 38ms. It's not the powerline that's hurting my ping, surely.

Well its quite simple to test if it is...

I moved to VF on City Fibre (100 Mb connection) and pinging BBC & Google comes out max 25ms
using the thinkbroadband speed tester it comes out as 45ms ?? but pinging says 27ms
For some reason get the full 100 down but only about 35-50 up using the TBB tester but using different testers get the full 100 in both directions
I use WIFI 6 on this machine as there is no ethernet port, should really fire up the old laptop as it has ethernet but I think it's a bit long in the tooth.
Did a speedtest using my raspberry pi that I run my networking controller on which is ethernet connected and get the same results which is a shame as I used to totally rely on the TBB tester.
I would say I would rely on an ethernet connection for reliable testing.

My BQM

Edited by TAZZ69 (Mon 02-May-22 23:51:20)