High Ping query: CityFibre Pro II 900mb

[aidej]

Hi, I am a new customer who has just migrated in from Virgin Media's Gig1 product which had terrible ping results amongst other issues and hence why I left as soon as City Fibre connected my street here in Glasgow. One advantage of the move to FTTP was, I believed, a low ping which would help with my gaming more than anything else.

Imagine my surprise when I have discovered that for the past 3 weeks since I was connected, my ping results have been worse than those of Virgin Media! My Vodafone ping results from Glasgow using most Speedtest sites and apps when connected by ethernet range from 20ms to 35ms, not the 5ms-10ms I had expected from FTTP. Speedtest apps also seem to think I live in London and it looks like my connection is being routed through Vodafone's London operations. Does anyone have any advice, surely Vodafone have more local routing options available?

[purrbox]

@Jayach 

The load balancing IS the upgrade. 

20ms ping isn't that bad for the overwhelming majority of users. 

As a business, it would involve a significant investment in infrastructure just to benefit a small minority. From their perspective, it would be better to have that minority leave. Power users tend to place higher demands on the network anyway.

[Jayach]

---

@purrbox wrote:

@Jayach 

The load balancing IS the upgrade. 

---

I disagree, but I'm not getting into a discussion about it.😜

[CrimsonLiar]

Hmm, so this affects more than just Vodafone!

I've mentioned before that I'm on Teesside, and I now with BT.  My IP4 traffic is "allegedly" routed via Telehouse in London and when IPv6 is enabled it looks like the IP4 connections CGNAT ,  As for the IPv6 traffic, well it's often up to 3ms faster but there's no easy way to tell where it's routed.  Looking at the figures to the various targets that have been used for the traceroutes/pings  I'm only 3-4ms faster on most of these, and a direct ping from the router to Cloudflare DNS comes in at around 9.6ms - that's about 0.3ms faster than I used to get on VF FTTC!  As far as XBox cloud gaming goes - connected over WiFi we're managing 17ms and that seems perfectly usable!

[Anonymous]

@Jayach  You said, "I'm currently on Surrey Quays, like @aidej, but that is brilliant for me as I'm in S.E. Essex, but I have previously been on Manchester/Leeds (don't think I've ever been on Edinburgh) but it does show that our Gateway servers do change."

Yes, gateway servers do change, but, as you say, there is no rhyme or reason to it from the user point of view. I am very happy to be on a consistent 6ms, instead of >20ms, since I got changed back to my nearest gateway (Birmingham), but the OP really is getting a raw deal, with a ping high enough at times to affect gaming performance.  

.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Ping, if it is too high, is an issue for gamers. A ping to a gaming server of 20-50ms, is counted as perfectly average.  You should get no lag  in most games,  although something nearer 20ms is noticeably better for racing and shooting games. Anything under 20ms is counted as pretty decent. Only professional gamers competing against each other require 10ms or less.  Now, tell me if I am wrong: Someone like me, with a consistent ping to the Vodafone Bracknell server or BBC.co.uk of 6ms, has a better chance of his gaming sons getting a ping to a UK or western European game server nearer to the very acceptable 20ms -30ms range. Yes? So @aidej with pings >30ms is unlikely to get a ping to a gaming server of <50ms.  If he plays racing and shooting games he is at a disadvantage and is therefore not getting an acceptable service from Vodafone, especially given that one of their sales poings is low ping. 

Using this link gameserverping  I get 30-40ms on a Call of Duty:Modern Warfare UK server, but 70ms on the Central European server.  For Valortant, also a shooter, I get 50-60ms on a West EU server,  likely to get the boys a  little lag at times. Am I right in saying that for someone like the OP with a base ping of 30ms, much more than my 6ms,  does it not stand to reason that, if he is a gamer, he will be getting less than satisfactory pings to gaming servers much of the time?   I am saying this in the context that when my basic ping was as high as 20ms, on the Manchester gateway,  the boys were the first to alert me. They did notice a difference in lag frequency. If they hadn't alerted me I may never have noticed my gateway had changed.  

 

[Jayach]

@Anonymous 

Yes, as you say the ping times will be added together, so someone who has a ping of 20ms before even reaching the main internet will always be at a disadvantage to someone with a ping of 6ms.

Unfortunately Vodafone don't take such things into consideration when they "load balance" their network.

Maybe a more "upmarket" ISP would be more considerate of these things, but Vodafone are very much a "bargain basement" type supplier, so we get what they give us. 

[Cynric]

@Anonymous That's a useful (and depressing) link. Of those games the only one I am interested in is Rainbow 6 where the ping settles down to a leisurely 56ms. You can see why I said "depressing" 😁

[Ripshod]

@Anonymous I just tried COD:MW on the ping site and my result varies from 70 to 120ms (London). Just so everyone can understand why this whole "load balancing" farce totally bugs me out. I haven't been able to play anything decent in a long time now. This is not what I pay for. Endinburgh gateway sucks. 

[aidej]

@Ripshod I’d gladly swap your Edinburgh gateway for my London gateway, if I could!

It’s a little ironic… and ridiculous given I’m in Glasgow and you are nearer to London and yet somehow we end up connected to the furthest geographical gateway from our location. 

[Tre-Keyz]

How do you get on a gateway near you? Or is it luck of the draw?

[Ripshod]

It's luck of the draw I'm afraid. That said, if it happened to lots of users there would be a lot more users complaining on the forums.

Suck it and see - as the old saying goes. You have 14 days after connection to test, and then cancel without penalty.