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What latency can I expect with M350/M500 service

Daniel3000
Tuning in

Hi everyone,

I've just returned to London and looking to sign up with Virgin. It seems the only proper high speed provider where I live, and not keen to go the subcontracted BT FTTC/VSDL route.

Low latency is quite important to me as I'm sure it is with many others too.

I wanted to ask what kind of latency other users are getting with the M350 or M500 services? Is there a max acceptable latency before VM will step in to fix poor latency issues? 

I've read in other posts that people have reported pings of 9-25 ms.... So I'm curious what should be usual... 25ms seems a bit high...

Thank you in advance.

Daniel

12 REPLIES 12

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

Latency on a VM connection is around a baseline of 18-23ms, on top of which there's often a noisy fringe of latency peaks; If you want low and consistent latency, Openreach may be a better bet.   Here's my VM connection on a relatively good day:

AndrewG_1-1651583302328.png

Why not order both, aim for the same install date, and if both arrive in a similar timescale compare the performance and cancel the least attractive under your 14 day cooling off rights?

 

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it.

That's very good advice. I'll have to check if Openreach are in my area, but I'll take a look now. It's the first time I've heard of them.

18-23ms isn't horrible I guess but not ideal.

Thank you again.

It looks like OpenReach states that the best broadband at my address is BT's FTTC... 😞 

It seems I'm not living in a great IT savvy/demanding neighborhood... 38-70 Mbps seems so 2015...

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

My latency on the BQM has always been around 25 but it's never bothered me in all the years I've had VM.

However, due to having a redundancy BT VDSL circuit, (for work purposes) I route my gaming over it.    Openreach are working in my area, and should be available within the next 6 months.  Their 900Mb FTTP looks very good on paper ....

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That sounds very interesting, thank you.

In my situation I need super low latency for PCoIP for work. I work on a remote machine via my local PC. I work on frame accurate timing on the remote machine, so mid to high latencies can effect my work. 25ms isn't bad, but I start to notice small errors in the timing of video frames and response times to my keyboard and USB input.

Sadly don't have a FTTP openreach or other (hyperoptic) option in my area in the foreseeable future.

Thanks again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Ookla speed tests return pings of 10-11 ms.

--
Hub 5, TP-Link TL-SG108S 8-port gigabit switch, 360
My Broadband Ping - Roger's VM hub 5 broadband connection

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. That sounds not bad at all!

Just to add I have the hub 3.0 and I'm on M500. Note that the broadband speed, though, relates to bandwidth not latency. You'll get decent latency so long as your hub has a good connection to the hub site and all is working well, but you won't get best latency from cable broadband.

Edited to say that the 10-11 ms was from my Windows 10 64-bit Firefox browser but I've just retested using the Ookla app and I repeatedly got 9 ms pings even when using different servers in London.

--
Hub 5, TP-Link TL-SG108S 8-port gigabit switch, 360
My Broadband Ping - Roger's VM hub 5 broadband connection

Hi,

Thanks for the info. It helps to know. Yes, I'm familiar with the difference between speed and latency.

It's interesting to see that users are observing different latency across Hub 3 and 4. 

I didn't realise that VM are still selling cable broadband. How do I find out which is in fact in my building?

If it's the M500 product is it a fibre only product? Their website doesn't seem to mention which technology is used in which products.

And then you can't voice chat with anyone there either...