good gaming isp - to US?

Currently with BE There which used to be very good and is still ok within UK, but my current game has the servers based near Washington US and ping to there is extremely bad. for a while now with support completely disinterested. I am aware BE are switching to Sky network but this is not starting until "Autumn" so likely 4-6 months.

- Router usually says connection is around 24/1.4mb (why does everywhere advertise 16mb? Even BE now say that)
- Unfortunately, I have the one exchange in my major city which is not even scheduled for fibre and one of few areas without Virgin.
- download limits have to be quite high due to the gaming and flatmates on iPlayer/iTunes etc (no torrenting though). I'm always befuddled at how much we seem to be getting through, the router keeps losing count due to resetting but I guess 100gb per month.
- Cost isn't a major consideration as long as it isn't silly.
- low minimum contract terms strongly preferred.

Zen?

You do realise that pings to US based gaming servers will always be bad to a large extent as even with the speed of light in fibre there is a delay

So what are you calling extremely bad?

In reply to a post by davegod:

- Router usually says connection is around 24/1.4mb (why does everywhere advertise 16mb? Even BE now say that)

Because the recent ASA/OfCom rule changes say that at least 10% of the ISP's customers must be able to reach the advertised speed.

- Unfortunately, I have the one exchange in my major city which is not even scheduled for fibre and one of few areas without Virgin.

Zen?

Should be good. Also IDNet. It might help re other suggestions if you tell us the exchange.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 07-Jun-13 21:50:56)

And of course light doesn't travel at the speed of light in fibre, it actually is about 70% of the speed of light (I believe I read something that it was because it is designed to bounce of the glass walls of the tube and therefore doesn't travel in a straight line). It is surprising how long it takes to get from the UK to the US at 70% of the speed of light.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I believe I read something that it was because it is designed to bounce of the glass walls of the tube and therefore doesn't travel in a straight line.

Sounds like a good idea. I wonder how many absolutely straight fibre optic cables there are from here to the States.

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_cable:

the 2012 generation of cables drop the transatlantic latency to under 60 milliseconds, according to Hibernia Atlantic

I wasn't quite right as to the reason. But hereis the breakthrough that will make light go faster in Fibre.

A big speed jump over transatlantic distances (I actually looked at it before when someone was complaining about ping from Australia to US - about 3 times further than from UK to US and just the round trip time is very significant in gaming terms.

And there will be a big premium to use those cables, hence usually stock traders pushing improvements for lower latency in the fibre and the various bits of switching hardware at the ends and other hops

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You do realise that pings to US based gaming servers will always be bad to a large extent as even with the speed of light in fibre there is a delay

So what are you calling extremely bad?

Sorry for delay in replying.

The lower the better. In the past latency has been about 100 and that would be OK. A teammate who lives fairly near me with fibre reckons he manages 40, though I have doubts that he is measuring that right.

For a couple of months now it has been 160 off-peak and, for the last few weeks, it jumps to 260 peak. The 160 follows the routing as in the past but I think there is a bad hop on the way. The 260 has a completely different traceroute with more telefonica hops and absurdly goes via California.

Incidentally, there are EU servers located in Netherlands (I have "friends" on the US server though) and off peak it can be ~35 though peak is 100-160.

I'm actually kinda suspicious that BE or someone further up the infrastructure is flipping a switch to change the routing during peak as the change is consistent around 6pm. I should probably actually test if it happens at a specific time.

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Jun-13 20:48:43)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It might help re other suggestions if you tell us the exchange.

Edinburgh Rose St

That reminded me of a page I saw a while back http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/ESROS if that is accurate then it says no Zen (presumably signing up to them would just be me paying Zen who would farm me out to BE or BT?) and not many others either