Fibre for gaming

tim_n

I'm looking at getting fibre for gaming. I live in an area where currently only 1.5mb to 2mb is possible, however I know it's not the mb when it comes to gaming, but the ping.

Plusnet does a fibre package for £21.49 which you can pay another £5pm which removes the traffic shaping.

Does anyone else offer a package without traffic shaping for around £25? I assume this is also why youtube videos have never been watchable until I moved to BE.

TJMaze

Doubtful you'll find one better for that kind of price.

The traffic shaping allows them to maintain higher average speeds for users who do basic web browsing and Email, to make their product appear both fast and cheap. Never seen it used in fibre products though, most of those are premium products and the service reflects that price..

Are you sure you can get fibre in your area? Normally those sorts of speeds you're saying are maximum would be associated with rural areas, the majority of which do not have access to fibre yet.

In any case, I don't think any of the fibre services use any sort of throttling that would have an impact on gaming, they sometimes throttle the overall bandwidth as opposed to prioritising traffic by type, so any fibre service should be suitable.

tim_n

having spoken to their technical services, they throttle to 1MB on their fibre service for gaming (see http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml). The extra £5 gives me 'titanium' (no throttling)

I'm not really rural, just at the furthest point between exchanges. The new cabinet is at the end of my road and from what I understand that is what counts - I also remember them stating that 17MB is the minimum they have to achieve which will improve my lot considerably.

I also have questions about the install - do they put in a new copper line or RJ45 cable? My house was built in the 1960s and doesn't seem to have had a rewire so the much talked about test socket just doesn't exist in my house, plusnet says they need an engineer to attend so I would assume they need access to the property to install something!

tim_n

ah I should really read the FAQ!

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/fibre/fibre_faq.shtml#installWhere

So it's an openreach modem whether I like it or not, however I assume I can plug my own router (or the one they provide me with) into it instead. Makes sense

TJMaze

Yes, it's a standard Huawei VDSL model, just with an Openreach sticker on it. You would plug your own router into the LAN port and set your routers authorisation settings to PPPoE, assuming your router supports it and has the appropriate port (usually labelled as WAN2).