Virgin Media Fibre and gaming

tlrBeta · 30 Jun 2011 at 14:03

Hi Guys,

I am moving to a new flat located in Cradley Heath, Old Hill. Using the Virgin broadband checker it says this great news:

"You're in a Virgin Media fibre optic cable area, so you can enjoy"

Now my question is, as I am, sure it has been asked already. Are any of the virgin media fibre services actually any good for FPS gaming needs? E.g. respectable ping, packet transfer so on.

Thoughts and experience welcome.

Cheers,

Mike

Dist · 30 Jun 2011 at 14:56

I'm on VM 20Mb and all FPS games are easily playable, on decent UK TF2 servers I got around a 15 ping, with 1 good sever even giving me a consisten 9 to 10 ping. The cable connections should be a lot more stable and better ping than connections over a phone line, but that said some VM areas are oversubscribed which could cause some problems, but the majority of us VM cable customers are happy with what we get (unlike the ADSL side of VM which sucks).

ATIorNvidia · 30 Jun 2011 at 15:13

I don't play FPS games, but I can tell you whenever I play any games on UK/EU servers my ping is always quite low (10-30).

tlrBeta · 30 Jun 2011 at 15:14

Dist said:
I'm on VM 20Mb and all FPS games are easily playable, on decent UK TF2 servers I got around a 15 ping, with 1 good sever even giving me a consisten 9 to 10 ping. The cable connections should be a lot more stable and better ping than connections over a phone line, but that said some VM areas are oversubscribed which could cause some problems, but the majority of us VM cable customers are happy with what we get (unlike the ADSL side of VM which sucks).

Cheers for the reply, I am also a heavy TF2 player.

I guess I can only try and see, though I am concerned at the no traffic management.

Whether I can really get up to the speeds it suggests are sceptical but the speeds reported are A LOT better then my ADSL options.

Mike

janp · 30 Jun 2011 at 15:43

As others have said, it's very hit and miss depending on which exchange your connected to. Some exchanges are over-subscribed (usually those exchanges near university housing), others are problematic (mine had 2-3 months of 90% packet loss.....the horror) and others are absolutely fine.

Generally I find Virgin's 50meg service pretty fantastic when it works. However if I have a fault with the broadband line, their support is terrible.

Zarf · 30 Jun 2011 at 16:19

Was awesome when I had it in Sheffield, even on 10Mb. Pings to BBC.co.uk were <10ms consistently and I had the full 10Mb 24/7. Game servers at good UK data-centers/universities were around 10-15ms.

Wish I had it now, 2Mb rural interleaved ADSL bites, I'm lucky to see a ping under 40ms.

tlrBeta · 30 Jun 2011 at 16:53

Gave them a message online, as you would expect they continually quoted "I can get up to 100mb" with the 50mb package most users receive 49.54mbps along those lines.

I guess I will take the plunge as my options are very limited.

1. 4-6mb ADSL
2. Virgin Media offering considerably faster

Thanks for the input,

Mike

KIA · 30 Jun 2011 at 18:33

janp said:
As others have said, it's very hit and miss depending on which exchange your connected to. Some exchanges are over-subscribed (usually those exchanges near university housing), others are problematic (mine had 2-3 months of 90% packet loss.....the horror) and others are absolutely fine.

Generally I find Virgin's 50meg service pretty fantastic when it works. However if I have a fault with the broadband line, their support is terrible.

UBR, not exchange.