Fiber speed question

[TheBrooder]

After years suffering with a 2.5mb adsl line, fiber has finally arrived!!

I can get 500mb/s, 1gb/s and 2gb/s.

Even the slowest will obviously be much faster than ADSL but with 500mb/s will I still get decent gaming performance (no rubber banding, lag, etc) if my wife watches netflix and my daughter uses the internet sometimes talking with friends on snapchat or whatever)?

 

[MrRockliffe]

After years suffering with a 2.5mb adsl line, fiber has finally arrived!!

I can get 500mb/s, 1gb/s and 2gb/s.

Even the slowest will obviously be much faster than ADSL but with 500mb/s will I still get decent gaming performance (no rubber banding, lag, etc) if my wife watches netflix and my daughter uses the internet sometimes talking with friends on snapchat or whatever)?

The total bandwidth here is less important that the connection method.


If you’re connecting over WiFi to a router with anything less than 4x4 MU-MIMO then you’re going to experience added jitter and/or lag compared to wired if you have 4 or more simultaneous users (inc you).


To ensure the best gaming experience, hard wire into the router and see if it has any traffic management/QoS to prioritise gaming.


Also depends on your routers capabilities - poor SoC may struggle with traffic management of gaming, streaming etc simultaneously



As an example, I’ve had a better gaming experience on 30 Mb hard wired with a Smart Hub on BT than 350 Mb wireless with VM.


If you can’t use Ethernet, make sure you’re on the 5 GHz band, with a good router.

 

[TheBrooder]

Hmm interesting - thanks for that!

I'm currently hard wired to the ADSL modem but I suspect the fibre access point will be in a different room, as the office is at the back of the house.

I'll have to contact them for more info - thanks again!

 

[JohnStewart]

I'm assuming you will get a new router from the company that installs the fibre.

Prior to use getting fibre last year, I had various QOS settings enabled on our router, and configured the maximum bandwidth for a specific device which was the only one with MU MIMO, and it could saturate the link leaving virtually nothing for everyone else.

Once the fibre was installed (900 Mb via BT), I played around with the various QOS settings on the same router, and found the best overall experience for everyone was simply to switch off the QOS altogether. There was enough bandwidth to go around that it wasn't an issue, even with that one device downloading/streaming at max.

Since then, I've run ethernet throughout the house and hard wired all devices that are capable (TVs, Sky box), desktop PCs and even a spare cable for when someone is using a laptop downstairs in the lounge, leaving only tablets and phones to connect wirelessly. It's made a massive improvement to overall user experience, particularly my son's gaming desktop.

 

[Sin_Chase]

500 is plenty for even heavy use by a household. You won't have any impact on gaming with others streaming media.

 

[ED209]

I have Virgin 100mb service and I have no issues gaming (wired directly to SH3) while my son is watching YT (wireless) along with the wife streaming nowTV or Netflix (both wireless)

 

[firestars]

Don't bother with QOS on the 500Mb. Its only really useful if you are running voice over the connection and even then on links that risk being saturated.