Fibre Broadband and Online Gaming

AMG762

Hi,

Just looking for advise regarding upgrading to fibre optic broadband. My current deal with sky is £5.12 line rental, and £7.50 unlimited broadband (i have a discount think 20%). My current ping is 34ms, download 5.59mbps, upload 0.68mbps.

My main internet useage is online games mainly on the ps3.

I have been offered unlimited fibre broadband with sky:
£20 per month plus current line rental £5.12 which they say will give a download speed of 33.1mbps and an improved (but unknown) upload and ping.

Also BT offer fibre at £26 per month with unlimited data, up to 38mbps download, up to 9.5mbps upload, and the line rental of £10.75

I just wondered if the extra £12.50 per month to upgrade with Sky would give a noticable improvement to the online games?

Does anyone have experience with sky fibre broadband and online games? Is it worth the upgrade?

GarbageGuy

Hi, I got sky fibre a few weeks ago, I was on the same adsl connections as you with a ping of about 25-35.
I play BF3 and Planetside 2 ( free amazing game ) .
I now get 38/10 yes 10mbs upload !and a ping as low as 7 in game, cant say I have noticed a difference with the ping, but my game patches and new games download in mins not 10 hours !! so do my torrents
I paid for my line rental 12 months upfront @£9.50, and £20 for fibre, not pro though, pro goes upto 76mbs

Jemma-T

Fibre broadband is a revolution and changes every household it touches.

Mmmm, I could copyright that.

Look around for a deal though and see if you can hammer them down on price.

Buzby

Especially since nobody actually gets fibre!

Shame the ASA hasn't stumped this out. Only when the delivery method IS fibre, should in be described as such. If you've still got a copper connection, the fact there is fibre upstream is irrelevant - even those on standard BB will have fibre upstream, somewhere!

Nilrem

Aye it should really be described as fibre only when it actually is, unfortunately in some ways describing the likes of Cable as fibre is about the only way to differentiate it from POTS or ADSL to a lot of people, and the same with FTTC, as most people don't understand the differences between even just cable and ADSL* except that one is called cable "but doesn't ADSL uses cables?";) and uses a round cable, whilst ADSL uses phonlines.

In answer to the op, virtually any BB be it cable, ADSL or ADSL/FTTC should be fine for online gaming, I have fairly consistently got pings of <20ms (sometimes<12ms) to gaming servers since I got cable (at 512k) in 2000ish - it used to be great running around on the EU servers for Ultima Online.
Even modern games with voice comms don't use a lot of bandwidth, I've been playing mechwarrior online** with friends, and even with my brother sharing the line, and us all being chatty in game ("look a that idiot in the raven at F6" and " "**** watch where you're pointing that laser you muppet!"), according to my router we're only using about 30-50KB/s during the games.

What I would recommend checking is the small print in the T&C of any BB deal, some offer "unlimited", but only when unlimited means less than a set amount a month.

*And both are usually delivered via copper (unless you're really unlucky with your phone line), yet completely different tech.

**Great game, currently free to play with real money only needed if you want to jump ahead/buy pretties for your mechs, or have more than 4 of your own mechs at once. My only complaint is that it's a bit buggy, but it's still in beta:p

Jemma-T

OK, fibery may be better

Bottom line is VDSL (very high bit rate digital subscriber line) does provide me 8-10 times higher speeds which is due to fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) then nasty copper to my house. Not sure of any benefit for fibre to my house (FTTP) as I'm already got lots of spare speed.

I tend to see more "Super Fast Broadband" than 'fibre' but I prefer the latter I suppose.