adsl vs fibre reliability...

[razer121]

I'm curious, I've always used adsl and it has always been fine for me, i don't really download alot so yeno thats a pointless selling point to me XD

But one thing i want to know is this, i game alot, on ps3 and pc will fibre optic actually make any difference at all?

I use to have BE broadband and it was amazing, no drop outs or lag and a good solid connection, even if it was only 6 meg broadband...

Now alot of my mates have fibre and i have gamed on it and honestly i cannot personally notice a big difference other than the download, so can someone savvy in this area enlighten me on this? thanks!

[kalniel]

No difference. If you had a solid ADSL connection then fibre will feel the same. Ping etc. is more dependant on contention than technology, so which ever technology is used by the majority of your neighbours will be the worst one.

[watercooled]

If you have a solid ADSL connection, you probably won't see any improvement on games - bandwidth doesn't really matter for playing, but you might struggle to host with limited bandwidth, depending on the game and number of players.

An annoying thing is some console games punish you for that, a friend is on Sky but lives a fair distance from the exchange so speed isn't great, Call Of Duty only seems to do a quick ping test to somewhere and pick the lowest, which would often be him. Unfortunately, as soon as the game started it would saturate his upload, drop everyone to 'red ping' then eventually pick another host, booting him from the game.

Also, connection quality depends largely on the ISP's core network rather than the last-mile technology in many cases, this is one reason why some LLU providers provide a better experience than others.

[razer121]

hm that makes sense but the new area i've no idea about the broadband which is a pain, im in the same town but other side do you think this will have a major effect?

[watercooled]

Hard to say, it depends how far you are from the exchange and, as kalniel said, how contested the service is.

[Lee H]

I've fibre and its rock solid. Then again the green cabinet is at the bottom of the garden so I must have a really short copper link from there to the connection coming in.

The weakest link in the chain is the rubbish routers that sky provide with MER so you cannot swap them

[watercooled]

Can you not use one of thos VDSL Draytek routers? Unfortunately, most of the big companies seem to be guilty of supplying rubbish equipment; VM Superhub can't cope with being a router and seems to occasionally interfere with traffic even in modem mode, I've heard some negative stuff about BT's equivalent and it might have changed now, but last I heard the separate VDSL modem they provide runs very hot causing it to crash so they insist on bolting it to a wall to improve circulation.

[Lee H]

Nope - not that I am aware of at the moment.

If sky used PPPoA we could all swap the hardware, but as it is locked down using MER (RFC1483) I would need to have 3 devices in a row in order to get better wireless support.

In regards to the modem part of the setup. Mines just left on the side, stood on its side for the air to circulate around it helping with stability and uptime

[razer121]

So....i could use say a 4mb connection from a provider and as long as i have a decent ping i should be fine with my gaming?

Also having alook around my area alot of it is sky or O2 so if i got say BE adsl again chances are id have a decent reliable connection?

[watercooled]

O2=BE, but AFAIK they're generally not bad in regards to contention etc. There's more to it than ping but if you're happy with your current connection, why move?

[razer121]

Moving home currently in a flat with flatmates using bt fibre which er i think is rubbish compared to my BE connection lol! but the download speed is nice for when i download updates on steam/ps3 just wondered how much difference with regards to lag...

[watercooled]

What makes you think it's rubbish?

Again, it's near-impossible to say how it will affect lag, the last-mile technology generally has a negligible impact.

[razer121]

hm....well to start cod for arguments sake i can only get a moderate connection, whereas when i was with BE i got an open connection o_O, there is alot of slow down after 4ish, pages can lag to load, the router is forever freezing on us and in general can be useless. Again with BE i was able to use my own router and never once did i get a drop out, slow down or any implications i suffer on BT, work that one out...literally the only good thing is the download speed everything else is rubbish! and as for lag in games....sometimes it can be spot on other times it is shocking! especially after 8ish it can become unplayable at times it is that bad...and not just on cod either!

Again with BE i never had this problem, ping was also alot better with BE compared to BT so alot makes me skeptical about going fibre...

[watercooled]

NAT problems are to do with the router/settings, not the connection itself. Most of the other stuff suggests over-utilisation in the area. With BT you can replace the modem and router with a third party one, Draytek and Billion are two off the top of my head who make them, but they're not cheap. I'm not sure how it works with ISPs besides BT though, after a quick bit of searching it seems a Billion one can work on Sky.

[Agent]

"Fibre" is just a way of delivering data to you. In terms of technologies, it's been around for a long time, it's just become more cost effective recently to use as part of the chain to residential houses.

As for your infinity comments, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. It sounds like either your friend has a connection issue somewhere, or you're trying to justify why yours is better.

BT Infinity, as a product is excellent and is generally considered one of the best ISPs out there at the moment. The homehub is very good for a 'free' ISP router, supporting all modern features and a decent range on the wireless. We absolutely hammer ours almost all day, every day and it's current uptime is measured in months. We easily cap out the max speeds of our connection (80/20) for prolonged periods without any trouble.

I say this as an O2 user as well (at my parents house). I don't have issues with either.

If pages are slowing down after 4ish, the router is crashing and the connection is 'useless' - why not report it?

You seem to be happy with BE, so why not just stop with them?

[kalniel]

So....i could use say a 4mb connection from a provider and as long as i have a decent ping i should be fine with my gaming?

Yes. A good and reliable ping score is the most important factor for gaming. Use pingtest.net to check. 4mbps is certainly fast enough for gaming in terms of bandwidth.