FASTEST Gaming Internet - Leamington Spa

Hello!

I'm a hardcore gamer and I've been looking for the fastest internet to game on for years but have always been disappointed.

I didn't have much luck with BT broadband, O2, and now Virgin Media's "fibre optic"...

Me and my buddy are moving in together and will be playing World of Warcraft and the XBox360 together A LOT and don't want any connection issues. That means we want low Latency, good upload speeds, and no traffic management that's going to shut us down in the middle of a game (like VM has been doing to me).

I've been looking into FTTC from BT, Fast.co.uk, and AAIsp.net

I'm really confused and not sure what to go with.

Money isn't much of an issue, I don't mind paying an extra £10 or even £20 if the service will offer me what I want and more.

I simply want to be able to log in quickly and never have to worry about freezing or being disconnected while playing. I don't want my internet being a bottleneck for our experience.

We're moving to Leamington Spa, and our Exchange is "CMLGS"

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/CMLGS

Apparently we'll be ~1.7km from the exchange, which pretty much rules out ADSL (as I suspect our speeds will be horrible and a cause for lag)

And Virgin Media is out of the question 1) because of past experiences, 2) they don't offer their "Fibre Optic" (50meg) service to that area anyways.

So I think our only option would be FTTC, but I don't know which company is the best, or if there is something faster/better than FTTC...

I'd really appreciate an expert opinion here, preferably a straight answer like "Go with X company, they will be the absolute best and fastest service for you in your exchange"

Please help me, I'm so desperate to finally get the perfect gaming connection and never have to worry about my passion and hobby being destroyed by false advertisement and traffic shaping!

Thank you very much!

1,7km from the exchange isn't far for ADSL?

You certainly want to go FTTC if you can, as for a company the only people I know that use it are on BT and its great for gaming.

Just need a decent ADSL isp, and get them to turn interleaving off and put you on fast path. No reason why your pings should be above 20 to any good uk server in that case.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Just need a decent ADSL isp, and get them to turn interleaving off and put you on fast path. No reason why your pings should be above 20 to any good uk server in that case.

Yeah but if we have 3 people using the internet, one is downloading, two are playing Xbox 360... wouldn't we get better speeds and performance with FTTC?

Does FTTC provide lower jitter/latency than ADSL?

I want me and my bro to be able to play games hardcore without any jitter or latency issues.

If you can't get fttc in your area then have a look at the various BE packages, e.g. BE Pro, the exchange is 21CN enabled allowing ISPs to provide BB packages with higher up to speeds.

Harry

If you want to know more about fttc have a look here and post any queries you have.

Harry

I think your best option would be FTTC, and if not available where you are moving to then Be, as just suggested by an anonymous poster.

Whether you need to go to Pro instead of Unlimited is a bit questionable. I wouldn't have thought it would make much difference for gaming, and Pro can decrease the download speed in order to increase the upload. The shorter the line the less likely that is.

Re FTTC, the cheapest is BT Infinity, but that is subject to slowdowns in the evening and traffic management on P2P. I'm on IDNet FTTC, and I have a list of suppliers here. On that page is a link to a spreadsheet by orly and yarwell, comparing features and basic prices.

Click the Live BQM link in my sig to see latency, and if you would like a ping test to a particular site just let me know. For now:-

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.jolt.co.uk

Pinging jolt.co.uk [84.234.17.86] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=122
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=122
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=122
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=122

Ping statistics for 84.234.17.86:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.bbc.co.uk

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.246.93] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 212.58.246.93:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 13ms

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 20-May-11 19:14:11)

Thank you RobertoS for the useful information.

I've been looking into AAISP, they appear to be extremely professional and offer excellent speeds and stability.

I'll check out other FTTC providers, but I have a good feeling about A&A.

Thank you for the useful links

Line will likely be too long for Be Pro with Annex M

I've been with AAISP for nearly a year now with FTTC. It has been excellent. Always high speeds and constant low pings. Would recommend to anyone. Just be careful with daytime usage depending on how much units you buy.