Broadband for Gamers: fast, minimal latency, and strong WiFi
For most people, the speed of their broadband is no more important than water pressure. Higher figures are preferable, but apart from waiting a little longer, there’s not much to worry about.
Among gamers, a good deal on fast broadband is critical to the prospect of enjoyable free time.
The intricate graphical rendering and complex calculations required by many of today’s online games demand split-second response times.
A delay of even one fiftieth of a second begins to damage the immersive nature of certain games, causing responses to stutter and pixel-perfect instructions to miss their intended targets.
Below, we consider how to choose the right broadband deals for gamers, explaining some of the issues they may face. But first, why is gaming different from other online services?
Unfair advantage
In the late 20th century, gaming was carried out in splendid isolation.
You might have friends taking turns or offering ‘constructive’ advice, or even competing against you through a second controller.
But from the Sinclair Spectrum to the Sony PlayStation, gaming didn’t really tax the internet.
Then came the advent of online titles like Lineage, Call of Duty and Worms Armageddon, closely followed by Gaming as a Service cloud providers including Steam and Stadia.
Suddenly, it was possible to pit your wits against gamers around the world, with horizons expanding far beyond your lounge or bedroom.
This relies on data being transmitted over the internet. And it’s immediately obvious that Player One has an advantage if their broadband is ten times faster than Player Two.
Player One will be seeing changes in real time, whereas Player Two may be seeing things that have already happened. Their attempts to influence the game will therefore also fail.
The delay between issuing an instruction and receiving a response is known as latency. And when it comes to broadband for gamers, latency is a killer – in-game and also in reality.
It’s typically the biggest gaming-related challenge caused by home broadband connections, notwithstanding having to download a 150GB FPS title in the first place…
What causes latency?
Every instruction, graphic and user input has to be distributed from your terminal to a host server, with responses being returned along equally congested network paths.
Along the way, the individual data packets containing this data pass through numerous nodes (including routers and servers), each adding a fractional delay.
The fibre-optic cabling used to distribute data isn’t quite as fast as the speed of light, with refraction inside the cables also slowing data’s journey from server to screen.
High traffic volumes further bog down data transfers, both server-side and in the cables themselves.
Client devices may be hindered by malware, a lack of hard drive space, too many open applications or technical specifications which struggle to power the software.
Why are online games particularly susceptible?
When you stream video content, the host provider uses various tricks to ensure a seamless viewing experience.
Variable bitrates deliver the highest picture quality the connection can stand at that moment, and a buffer of content ensures a brief loss of connectivity won’t cause any stuttering.
These tricks aren’t really possible with gaming, which relies on real-time decision-making and split-second responses.
A two-second gap in connectivity while playing Forza Horizon 4 would probably see your McLaren Senna embedded in a highly realistic-looking tree.
There’s also the presence of other participants and combatants to consider.
The Shadowlands expansion to World of Warcraft last autumn saw seven million players active at one time. That’s a phenomenal amount of activity taking place at any given instant.
A sluggish connection won’t be able to display all those changes quickly enough. Unless you’re casting a self spell like Mass Dispel, you’ll always be behind the action.
And even if an online game is a standalone experience, the suitability of home broadband for gamers is affected by what other people on your connection are doing simultaneously.
If three people are attempting to play FIFA 21, stream BritBox and chat over Skype at the same time, it’ll take more than an ADSL connection to support these activities.
We recently explained the difference between line speeds in one of our consumer guides.
Tips for improving home broadband for gamers
Other steps could also help to ensure better broadband for gamers:
Other steps which will improve broadband for gamers
Gaming is hugely data-intensive, so only a data-unlimited broadband subscription will be suitable for downloading and participating in cloud-based gaming services.
Because you might be switching between different devices, strong WiFi performance is important, too.
If your supplied router isn’t up to the job, you can usually replace it with a third-party router offering external aerials and superior throughput speeds. Virgin Media is one exception here.
BT offers dedicated fibre packages for gamers, while hyperfast cable of FTTP broadband (anything over 300Mbps) should be fine, especially if it has symmetrical upload and download speeds.
If your current provider isn’t delivering suitable broadband for gamers’ requirements, you might wish to consider switching ISP.
Homes cabled with full fibre services available from the likes of Hyperoptic offer an alternative to slower Fibre to the Cabinet connections dependent on the Openreach network.
Some ISPs are limited in the speeds they can offer by hardware or network issues, while others have more powerful routers or superior infrastructure.
Pay particular attention to upload speeds. These can be less than a tenth of downloads, despite the fact online gaming involves updates being constantly dispatched to host servers.
You can check local ISP offers on our homepage, or navigate directly to one of our regional pages aimed at broadband customers in London, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland, among others.
Frequently asked questions
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What does 'download speed' mean?▲
Download speed is actually talking about your bandwidth, specifically your downstream.
This is the part of your connection that receives data from the internet.
Your download speed is relevant for almost all online activity as everything you see on the internet has to be sent to you through the downstream.
Instead of making data move faster, a higher bandwidth (what is listed as higher ‘download speed’) means more data can move through your broadband connection at the same time.
The download speed is the maximum amount of data that can be sent to your connection, so a 17Mbps ‘speed’ means you can receive a maximum of 17 megabits of data every second.
Similarly, if you have fibre broadband capable of ‘up to 76Mbps’, that means you can receive a maximum of 76 megabits of data every second.
A higher download speed increases the maximum potential speed of your home broadband.
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What does 'upload speed' mean?▼
Your upload speed is how much data your connection can send at any one time. While your computer will constantly send small amounts of data to websites and servers, your upload speed will only really come into play if you’re trying to publish files online.
Putting a video on YouTube or a photo on Facebook will require you to upload your files, so a faster upload speed will make this happen quicker.
Unless you spend a lot of time uploading files, you probably aren’t going to get a lot of use out of a high upload speed connection.
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What is full fibre/FTTH/FTTP?▼
Full fibre, FTTH and FTTP are one and the same thing. FTTH stands for Fibre to the Home, and FTTP stands for Fibre to the Premises.
FTTP is a more popular term and you’re likely to see this one being used than FTTH.
The most common way of describing this type of broadband is to call it “full fibre”.
So what is it?
It is a fibre broadband connection that uses only fibre-optic cables, that is not mixed with slower copper wiring, to deliver a broadband connection right into your home, and not via a green street cabinet.
This contrasts with the older technology of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), sold as “up to 38Mbps” or “up to 76Mbps. Fibre to the Cabinet does use a mix of fibre-optic cables and copper, and delivers home broadband through your closest green street cabinet.
Full fibre can produce speeds of up to 1,000Mbps – commonly called ‘gigabit broadband’ and written out like this: 1Gbps.
Speeds are ‘symmetric’, which means that you can get similar upload and download speeds.
By contrast, older technology like ADSL or Fibre to the Cabinet can only produce ‘asymmetric’ speeds, meaning that uploads are 10 times or more slower than downloads.
These full fibre networks are still being built as we speak, so not everyone in the country will be able to get full fibre to their home just yet.
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What is streaming?▼
Streaming means listening to music or watching a movie in real time rather than downloading a file to your computer or tablet and watching it later.
To successfully stream films, TV or music as you will on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Spotify, your home broadband speed needs to be running fast enough to show the streaming data.
Usually ADSL standard speed broadband – up to 17Mbps – is not quick enough or reliable enough to stream TV or music. Fibre to the Cabinet broadband – up to 38Mbps or up to 76Mbps – is the recommended minimum speed for streaming.
To help with streaming, the data files of your music or movie are compressed to use as little broadband bandwidth as possible.
Most broadband deals come with unlimited data, so there are no limits on the amount of data you can use every month.
Listening to music can consume around 0.5-1MB per minute while watching a YouTube video can consume about 4-5MB per minute.
Sometimes there can be an interruption to streaming. To counter this your computer stores a ‘buffer’ of the data it has already received.
If there’s a drop-out, the buffer enables the streaming to continue uninterrupted. If there is no more data in the buffer then you’ll see the message “Buffering.”
