Broadband for gaming: top 5 revealed
CommentsTHE right broadband package can stop the lags and freezing that make interacting online irritating.
Whether you want to compare your weight loss on the Wii fit or get lost in an online world our guide to gaming broadband can help.
Here we look into the difference speeds, download limits and even hardware can make to gamers as well as the five providers offering the best deals right now.
What makes gaming broadband?
Fast speeds
Packages marketed specifically as 'gaming broadband' seem to have fallen out of favour over the past few years.
Just look at how Demon's gaming broadband sank without a trace just over a year after its launch, for example.
We'd guess the main reason for that is that many of the people who would have once signed up for gaming deals are now opting to go with much faster, albeit non-gamer specific, packages.
That's because getting your broadband up to speed is the great first step to gaming heaven: it should keep gamers on the ball when playing against other people online and it'll certainly save time when downloading new games or extra features.
Fibre optic cables provide the fastest broadband connections available in the UK: up to 100Mb in some areas.
In areas where fibre isn't available the fastest providers advertise up to 24Mb speeds. However, in reality, even the top-performing providers only actually deliver about 7Mb on average - that's still slower than the average speed of an up to 10Mb fibre connection.
Gamers that need to upload data regularly could also look at upload speeds.
Again, fibre outperforms ADSL2+ by some distance: the fastest BT Infinity deals offer upload speeds of up to 10Mb while Virgin Media promises 10% of its cable packages' download speeds.
Be and O2 broadband offer higher upload speeds than most other ADSL providers - up to 2.5Mb with their top deals.
Speeds aren't everything
However, speeds aren't everything. And we're not just saying that as a sop to the fibre-less masses.
It's not higher speeds but more consistent connections that make the best gaming broadband deals.
The aim should be to reduce jitter (wildly different ping rates) and latency (also known as lag or freezing) to give you smooth, fast game play.
Speeds have something, but not everything, to do with it.
For example, Virgin Media and BT won't necessarily offer you the fastest or most consistent gaming broadband speeds because they operate traffic management and fair use policies.
The best traffic management
Broadband packages specifically aimed at gaming use often have traffic management policies that directly benefit gaming traffic.
With the £5 a month Plusnet Pro add on, for example, all gaming and VoIP traffic is automatically put into their titanium queue and receives preferential treatment over the regular streaming media and email traffic queues.
Similarly, Aquiss broadband's gaming package offer an anti-loss feature which to prevent any part of the connection becoming over saturated and causing jitter on the connection.
Conversely, however, some of the most popular gaming broadband providers have won favour by doing without traffic management altogether.
Virgin Media's 50Mb XXL broadband, for example, only operates traffic management on peak time uploads for those with their 5Mb speed upgrade at the moment.
Be broadband are also well-known for not managing any traffic on their network, a policy which seems popular with their small army of gaming fans.
Contention ratios
Be broadband are also well known for their low contention ratios.
The contention ratio describes the number of people sharing bandwidth on a single connection.
To make as much cash as possible budget providers can pack 50 or more people on to one line (ratio of 50:1). The best gaming broadband providers have lower contention ratios which decreases lag as well as speeding up connections somewhat.
Unlimited downloads
All of our top five gaming broadband providers offer unlimited downloads for at least some of the time.
Unlimited downloads are a stress-saver because users know they'll only pay one fixed price: gaming can be a download-heavy online pastime.
For example, online gaming service OnLive uses up 0.9GB an hour at its minimum speed requirement of 2Mb.
At the recommended speed of 5Mb, this soars to 2.25GB an hour.
Admittedly, OnLive is the most bandwidth hungry online gaming service we've ever heard of but all online gaming falls into the category of some of the most download-hungry online activity.
For that reason, fair use policies are worth checking: they can seriously limit those 'unlimited' deals.
Static IP
Finally, a static IP address - for running a gaming or FTP server - is a gaming broadband must-have.
Most of the top premium packages offer a static IP address for free.
Usually other packages will allow customers to upgrade for a fee although note that some providers - TalkTalk, for example - flatly refuse to offer this facility at all.
Gaming broadband hardware
Most seventh-generation consoles - so that's the Nintendo Wii and PS3 plus handhelds like the Nintendo DS and PSP - come with the ability to access wi-fi signal built-in.
After PC gaming, this is by far the easiest way to use gaming broadband since most broadband deals now come with a free wireless router.
Any wireless router with the protocol 802.11n / 802.11g (or mixed, so: 802.11g/b) will have no problem connecting but those thinking of using an old router will need to make sure that it's compatible before they reject that new router.
To get as strong a gaming broadband connection as possible to the internet, you might find it helpful to connect through an Ethernet cable.
For example, those with an Xbox 360 - which can't pick up wireless signal - will need a wireless adaptor or USB-to-ethernet adaptor, sometimes known as a LAN adaptor to get online.
Providers
We've already mentioned many of these providers throughout this guide: here's our top five.
1. Be broadband
As we noted above, Be broadband offer completely unlimited downloads and low contention ratios as well as the fastest speeds of any ADSL2+ provider.
Their most expensive deal also offers a free static IP address.
2. O2
O2 share a network with Be and also share a relaxed attitude to downloads and a free static IP for those with their top deal, The Works.
They also have the advantage of being considerably cheaper. Find out more about the differences between them in our O2 vs Be guide.
3. Plusnet
Plusnet's Pro add-on adds £5 a month to the price of any of their broadband deals and prioritises gaming and VoIP traffic.
On the downside, Plusnet don't offer unlimited downloads except during off-peak times: 12pm to 8am.
4. Sky
Sky's unlimited package really is: no traffic management and a very fair fair use policy make this a favourite with heavy downloaders like gamers.
5. Virgin Media
No provider is faster, on average, than Virgin Media which is enough to put them in our top five.
Their cable service is even beating BT's equivalent fibre service, Infinity, according to independent tests in the speed stakes and Virgin Media 50Mb comes with very few fair use restrictions.
With this top package, only those with upload speeds of up to 5Mb will find their service slowed during peak times (and only the upload traffic), although slower Virgin Media broadband deals do have more restrictions.
Comments
Hi,
I have Sky and use a PS3, my online gaming was great but being a gamer thought I could get it faster, so I had Virgin Media installed instead.
They told me that 30Mb/s would be the best deal for me, so I agreed. There is no diference in the game play, in fact I would say it isn't as good as Sky.
My previous Sky package gave me 5mb and what I noticed is that my ping was 35 and the jitters were 1 near enough every time I did a speed and ping test. When I test Virgin I get 30mb but my ping is 28 and my jitters are 12 - 18. For me, I think that this ping is a major thing when gaming and my Virgin line has too much interference.
What do you think? Any input would be gratefully received. Thanks.
Connection speed when gaming is of minimal priority in fact the only factor a gamer should be interested in is the ping and the stability of the ping at that. Based on my experience and the views of many others, Virgin Media is one of the worst internet providers for internet access. They have on average very high pings (note on average) and the jitter rate (the stability of the ping) is amongst the worst in the UK.
Example:
Sky Broadband's connection offered a ping of 22ms in my area with a jitter rate of about 3ms (so it would rise above 22ms on average by 3ms peak).
Virgin Media in my area which does download and uploads at over it's maximum rated speed (downloads at 30Mbps and uploads at 3Mbps). Offers average pings of 40ms during low usage times and 50ms during peak times and has a jitter rate of 40ms during low usage times and 60ms during peak times. This means that my connection is spiking frequently during low usage times to 80ms and in peak times is frequently peaking at over 100ms (this is very bad).
A good connection should peak at about 15ms for reference.
You see, gaming has nothing, bar a very small relationship, anything to do with the width of your connection speed. The difference between a 1Mbps connection and a 50Mbps connection is only 1ms added to the ping and the ping is all a gamer should be interested in.
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