Network Ping Question (ISP etc) FPS Games

GoggleZ · 25 Mar 2013 at 12:36

Hello Guys,

I have recently heard that Sky are buying out BE Broadband and i'm thinking about changing ISP.

I have been very happy with BE and when playing Counter Strike:GO i'm receiving around 10-25 ping on UK Servers with only a 4MB/s ADSL BB Connection - which is excellent.

My question is, if I was to change ISP to BT Infinity (Fibre 50M/B) would my ping only ever be better or is there a chance that it may be higher?

As most of you probably know, high ping and loss of packets are the two factors in which Counter Strike performs badly.

ci_newman · 25 Mar 2013 at 12:56

There is always a chance that the ping will be higher, it's more likely that it will be about the same though.

KIA · 25 Mar 2013 at 13:06

It'll be higher if interleaving is applied.

chid76 · 25 Mar 2013 at 13:12

I'm also with BE and I get a ping of 7-8 on uk BF3 servers but will be looking for a new ISP once the Sky deal go's through. I think your ping is somewhat determined by how far your exchange is from your house. My exchange is only 0.6 miles from my house and if I switch to fibre I would expect it to stay about the same?
I have a friend who went from a maybe 4MB/s line to BT Infinity fibre and his pings went from 35ish to about 16, so I can't really see them being any worse.

FrenchTart · 25 Mar 2013 at 13:25

chid76 said:
I'm also with BE and I get a ping of 7-8 on uk BF3 servers but will be looking for a new ISP once the Sky deal go's through. I think your ping is somewhat determined by how far your exchange is from your house. My exchange is only 0.6 miles from my house and if I switch to fibre I would expect it to stay about the same?
I have a friend who went from a maybe 4MB/s line to BT Infinity fibre and his pings went from 35ish to about 16, so I can't really see them being any worse.

Your ping isn't affected (in any appreciable way) by distance from your house to the exchange. The only exception to this is that if your line is unstable without interleaving applied (as KIA mentioned).

My experience: Last year I moved house to another on the same exchange. At the same time I moved from Be ~11Mbit/s fastpath to BTInfinity 20/80Mbit (line at full speed and stable so no excessive interleave). Pings are on average 5 msec higher to most servers. Slightly more if measured by some means. I'm based in Manchester.

Suarez7 · 25 Mar 2013 at 13:33

My ping on BT Infinity is between 20-30 on UK servers, but I live up north and the majority of servers are based down south.

GoggleZ · 25 Mar 2013 at 14:01

Thankyou for the fast responses guys - it certainly seems to be a case of "Suck it and See" however, have looked into this "Interleaving" feature which is apparently applied on all fibre connections (BT Inphinity)... see below a quote from BT:

Interleaving involves the use of powerful error-correction algorithms to improve broadband speed and stability on long or noisy phone lines. We use it as a matter of course on our broadband lines including BT Infinity lines where the connection between the street cabinet and your home is over copper cable.
While interleaving helps make your broadband faster and more stable, it can also increase the delay (latency) of your connection by up to 40ms (milliseconds). While most people wouldn't normally notice this, it can adversely affect some delay-sensitive applications such as certain online games.
Interleaving can't be switched off for BT Infinity (fibre-based broadband) lines. But you can ask for it to be switched off on ADSL broadband lines - although we don't recommend it.
If you want us to switch off interleaving on your ADSL broadband line, please contact us. It'll take up to five working days. If you then find the performance of your line gets worse, contact us again to get interleaving switched back on.

This makes me think that maybe BT's fibre is a bad idea for gaming so will think of any other ideas or services that I can switch to.

Really gutted about Sky buying BE.

Suarez7 · 25 Mar 2013 at 14:11

They do switch interleaving off on Infinity but it's an automatic thing whereby if your line is stable for long enough it turns itself off.

enigma27 · 25 Mar 2013 at 14:32

GoggleZ said:
Thankyou for the fast responses guys - it certainly seems to be a case of "Suck it and See" however, have looked into this "Interleaving" feature which is apparently applied on all fibre connections (BT Inphinity)... see below a quote from BT:

This makes me think that maybe BT's fibre is a bad idea for gaming so will think of any other ideas or services that I can switch to.

Really gutted about Sky buying BE.

why? I have been with Sky for 7 years and never had a problem... always had max speeds for my line and your argument about ping and gaming is just ridiculous..

The difference between a 7-8 ping and 20-30 ping is nothing.. I used to have ISDN and pinged on that at about 50-60 and still saw no difference... unless your talking +100 - 200 pings your be fine.

FrenchTart · 25 Mar 2013 at 14:35

enigma27 said:
why? I have been with Sky for 7 years and never had a problem... always had max speeds for my line and your argument about ping and gaming is just ridiculous..

The difference between a 7-8 ping and 20-30 ping is nothing.. I used to have ISDN and pinged on that at about 50-60 and still saw no difference... unless your talking +100 - 200 pings your be fine.

There is a difference between sub 10 msec pings and 30 ping. Depends on the game but it can be felt in quite a few games.

Sky LLU used to be fairly decent but if you look around online you'll see that it has gone downhill massively in the past 6 or so months. If I was still on Be I would be very worried about being moved to Sky and suffering from far worse CS and capacity problems.

GoggleZ · 25 Mar 2013 at 15:16

FrenchTart said:
There is a difference between sub 10 msec pings and 30 ping. Depends on the game but it can be felt in quite a few games.

Sky LLU used to be fairly decent but if you look around online you'll see that it has gone downhill massively in the past 6 or so months. If I was still on Be I would be very worried about being moved to Sky and suffering from far worse CS and capacity problems.

Thankyou for the "Backup" FrenchTart, not even going to bother arguing as I know what i'm talking about unlike some! lol

My BT Line from my house to the Exchange is only a couple of years old so I would have thought that the line would be in a fairly reasonable condition to warrant the interleaving being turned off - probably a good idea for me to contact BT and see what they suggest but if im honest I appreciate this forum members opinions than that of BT's "Technical Support".

enigma27 · 25 Mar 2013 at 15:24

GoggleZ said:
Thankyou for the "Backup" FrenchTart, not even going to bother arguing as I know what i'm talking about unlike some! lol

My BT Line from my house to the Exchange is only a couple of years old so I would have thought that the line would be in a fairly reasonable condition to warrant the interleaving being turned off - probably a good idea for me to contact BT and see what they suggest but if im honest I appreciate this forum members opinions than that of BT's "Technical Support".

I have been playing competitive online games for the past 16 years.. I think that's long enough to have gained some knowledge into the subject.

Plus why would you contact BT about Interleaving? BT Infinity has it on full stop.. you would need to contact the ISP of the ADSL line to sort that out as they have to request it but if you are going fibre anyway then there is no need. BT runs the backbone of the fibre network no matter which ISP you choose and if they wont turn it of then your out of luck as the ISP has no say.

cr!spy · 25 Mar 2013 at 15:51

OP - my ping improved when I went to BT Infinity, it was on 40-50 before and now I'm getting 15-25. I've had it now for just over 2 months and the ping has been the same since installation.

Also, I don't blame you for wanting to avoid Sky broadband. Yes, they're fine all the time you don't have a problem, but when you do it is a right pain getting it sorted. I try to steer friends and family away from using their broadband service personally.

GoggleZ · 26 Mar 2013 at 09:24

cr!spy said:
OP - my ping improved when I went to BT Infinity, it was on 40-50 before and now I'm getting 15-25. I've had it now for just over 2 months and the ping has been the same since installation.

Also, I don't blame you for wanting to avoid Sky broadband. Yes, they're fine all the time you don't have a problem, but when you do it is a right pain getting it sorted. I try to steer friends and family away from using their broadband service personally.

Thankyou for your feedback, I have decided to bite the bullet and purchase Infinity2 - upon the line optimisation being completed, I will post my results here for all to see!

KIA · 26 Mar 2013 at 11:32

enigma27 said:
The difference between a 7-8 ping and 20-30 ping is nothing.. I used to have ISDN and pinged on that at about 50-60 and still saw no difference... unless your talking +100 - 200 pings your be fine.

There's a difference. I can tell the difference between 10ms and 30ms when I'm playing TF2.

mistercrabb · 26 Mar 2013 at 13:52

KIA said:
There's a difference. I can tell the difference between 10ms and 30ms when I'm playing TF2.

I don't think you can.
A 20ms difference is 0.02 seconds, or 1 single frame delay at 60fps. Bearing in mind the game also compensates for lag it should be impossible to tell.
Maybe you're dropping packets?

Anything up to 100ms ping is absolutely fine for fps games unless you are playing competitively, I don't see why people are so worried about it when they hit over 50ms.

FrenchTart · 26 Mar 2013 at 14:12

mistercrabb said:
I don't think you can.
A 20ms difference is 0.02 seconds, or 1 single frame delay at 60fps. Bearing in mind the game also compensates for lag it should be impossible to tell.
Maybe you're dropping packets?

Anything up to 100ms ping is absolutely fine for fps games unless you are playing competitively, I don't see why people are so worried about it when they hit over 50ms.

This is often touted and people that come out with it incorrectly assume that there's a 1:1 relationship between an increase in ping and the delay experienced by the end user. It's not as simple as that.

GoggleZ · 26 Mar 2013 at 14:17

mistercrabb said:
I don't think you can.
A 20ms difference is 0.02 seconds, or 1 single frame delay at 60fps. Bearing in mind the game also compensates for lag it should be impossible to tell.
Maybe you're dropping packets?

Anything up to 100ms ping is absolutely fine for fps games unless you are playing competitively, I don't see why people are so worried about it when they hit over 50ms.

I currently have 0 packet loss and 0 fps choke on the game in question (CS:GO).

I play this competitively at a semi-high level, therefore I obviously want the best possible connection and gaming experiance (almost LAN-Like would be perfect lol).