So what's the lowest latency service...

DamoTourettes · 12 Nov 2012 at 18:09

...that isn't FTTC or "superfast"?

Unfortunately I can't get this sucker, but am very intrigued with the possibilities of cable...? What's the general consensus?

Also, anyone had any experience of BE networks over the past year or so? I've heard they have dropped off in service - this still the case?

drizzy · 12 Nov 2012 at 21:29

Be were still good for me in June of this year but don't know anymore.

Cable is in general very not good for gaming, especially if you're specifically after the lowest latency service.

HangTime · 12 Nov 2012 at 22:58

Be used to be arguably the best domestic provider for latency, with Londoners seeing as low as 5ms.

Cable at its best can compete at around those levels (sub-10ms) but is very unreliable and with Virgin focusing on speed these days I'd be surprised if there are many locations left where you can get low latency all the time due to localised contention.

If you have a lot of cash to throw at it then SDSL may be worth considering but I don't have any first-hand (or even second-hand) experience of it.

KIA · 13 Nov 2012 at 10:18

Regular ADSL can be under 10ms.

FrenchTart · 13 Nov 2012 at 11:17

I had Be for a bit about 6 months ago and my latency was fine. Fastpath saw me with low pings to most servers.

DamoTourettes · 14 Nov 2012 at 17:19

Muchos gracias peeps - BE it is!

paradigm · 14 Nov 2012 at 18:03

HangTime said:
Cable at its best can compete at around those levels (sub-10ms) but is very unreliable and with Virgin focusing on speed these days I'd be surprised if there are many locations left where you can get low latency all the time due to localised contention.

I guess I must live in one of these "holy grail" Virgin Media locations, as my connection has been spot on for the entire time I've had it. Currently my average ping to a jolt or multiplay server is <15ms, and I'm on the 100Mb tier (due to be 120Mb early next year). FWIW my download (and upload for that matter) speeds always max out my line (where the remote end can handle it).

DamoTourettes · 15 Nov 2012 at 10:34

HangTime said:
Be used to be arguably the best domestic provider for latency, with Londoners seeing as low as 5ms.

Cable at its best can compete at around those levels (sub-10ms) but is very unreliable and with Virgin focusing on speed these days I'd be surprised if there are many locations left where you can get low latency all the time due to localised contention.

If you have a lot of cash to throw at it then SDSL may be worth considering but I don't have any first-hand (or even second-hand) experience of it.

I'd like to look at SDSL simply because of the notions of contention, however I can't see it happening - I think BE is offering the best ratios at the moment so I'm thinking that's the way I'll jump - also, they offer a "gaming mode" which I think simply reduces the SNR to improve latency...

DamoTourettes · 15 Nov 2012 at 10:35

paradigm said:
I guess I must live in one of these "holy grail" Virgin Media locations, as my connection has been spot on for the entire time I've had it. Currently my average ping to a jolt or multiplay server is <15ms, and I'm on the 100Mb tier (due to be 120Mb early next year). FWIW my download (and upload for that matter) speeds always max out my line (where the remote end can handle it).

That's very impressive dude. Nice one.

sithlord · 15 Nov 2012 at 13:18

Cable can get you around 5ms.

KIA · 15 Nov 2012 at 17:39

Average cable latency is never 5ms, not to mention the jitter.

ChrisD. · 15 Nov 2012 at 18:44

KIA said:
Average cable latency is never 5ms, not to mention the jitter.

Agreed.

Antowns · 16 Nov 2012 at 10:38

drizzy said:
Be were still good for me in June of this year but don't know anymore.

Cable is in general very not good for gaming, especially if you're specifically after the lowest latency service.

I'm still with Be and I get around 25-35ms ping within games on BF3 and BO2.

JimAroo · 16 Nov 2012 at 14:54

It's luck of the draw I'm afraid.

Lucky for me I have a good VM connection, max speed whenever I want and have always had < 15ms ping to London for as long as I care to remember.

I live way way up north and I get an average of 14ms ping to BBC, which is pretty damn impressive when i know people in London pinging 7 to it.

DJMK4 · 17 Nov 2012 at 21:12

I get around 30-35ms avg ping times BE

blueacid · 18 Nov 2012 at 22:10

With Be* you can control the SNR margin (3 / 6 / 9db) which largely affects connection speed and its resilience to noise.
Seperately you can adjust whether the connection is Interleaved or Fastpath (Fastpath = Gaming Mode On).

My line is a little unstable with gaming mode on, so I'm back on Interleaved, pings of 20msec or so:
PING www.multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.68) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from www.multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.68): icmp_req=1 ttl=57 time=20.6 ms
64 bytes from www.multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.68): icmp_req=2 ttl=57 time=20.6 ms
64 bytes from www.multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.68): icmp_req=3 ttl=57 time=20.4 ms
64 bytes from www.multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.68): icmp_req=4 ttl=57 time=20.4 ms
^C
--- www.multiplay.co.uk ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 20.444/20.563/20.692/0.154 ms

With Fastpath, those pings fell to around 12msec. So there's around 8msec to be gained for enabling gaming mode, although it does highlight any problems with your phone line!

Zbornak · 19 Nov 2012 at 00:14

I'm getting this with VM which is better than a few weeks ago:

Phreaky · 19 Nov 2012 at 23:05

Average latency for a lightly loaded cable ring is something like 5ms anyway, so unless you live next door to the LINX exchange I'd be amazed if you could average anything around that range.