Latency for remote working (VNC) and gaming

[SteveH12]

I'm moving to a new house, and thinking about getting Virgin fibre. Is there anyway to find out what range in latency (jitter) I would expect to have at my postcode (e.g. how utilised is the fibre capacity through the day). Is it possible to find out this information before signing up. I know there is a 14-day cooling off period in which I could utilise if I am unhappy.

Thanks in advance, Steve

[lotharmat · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure there is! - SO much depends on the line that you have and the quality of the connectors (if they are degraded it won't help)

I don't know if you can search on thinkBroadband for postcode level results.

[Andrew-G]

If you're lucky there's a handful of forum staff who know how to check that, but it's not normally something that VM divulge. 

The sad thing is that overall VM perform well on utilisation, but what they don't perform well on is being open about where problems exist and whether there are real plans to fix it.  For those who do suffer such problems, in many instances the company issue repeated "fix dates" without any intention of meeting those, and when the date arrives they just push it back yet again.

If you want to protect your own interests, book both an Openreach ISP installation and VM.  If one gets delayed and the other doesn't then there's a message in that (VM aren't doing terribly well with some new installs at the moment), if they both get installed within a couple of days you've got 14 days to decide to drop whichever one you feel is least suited to your needs.

VM latency on a good connection is usually entirely adequate for gaming, VPN and video conferencing, but the DOCSIS technology isn't perfect on this, and has some day to day, week to week variabilities even if not subject to network congestion.

[SteveH12]

I have checked broadband comparison sites, including thinkbroadband (thanks Iotharmat !) but only download/upload speeds are reported. Its a shame there's not a crowd-sourced postcode level reporting of this on the internet. There is VM line into the property so will likely try them out first for the 2 weeks and get an idea of performance. I was quite happy with 30-40ms over copper and was hoping fibre would be equivalent or better.

[Eeeps]

Your other problem is that VM can add subscribers to your local network segment very easily.
If properties are already cabled all they have to do is send out a quick install pack.
So a connection that turns out to be very good at the start of your contact can very quickly become poor to unusable.

Mind you, what can happen in an area is an oscillation between good and bad as customers join and then leave because of the congestion.

As an example, my network segment currently provides little over 50% of the rated download speeds during peak hours.
It's still usable for the the vast majority of customers so I guess thing will get worse before they get better as VM cram more onto the segment and 'sweat their assets'.

[jpeg1]

---

@SteveH12 wrote:

 I was quite happy with 30-40ms over copper and was hoping fibre would be equivalent or better.

---

There's fibre and there's fibre.  VM's version DOCSIS depends heavily on utilisation and varies considerably by time of day.  Mine today has varied from 12 to 40mS, with regular peaks much higher.