Hi All,

I did a search but did not find any topics containing fiberoptic.  I was wondering I should get fiberoptic internet service versus traditional cable.  Obviously fiberoptic communication is faster than digital, but data from fiberoptics has to go through switches and routers to be converted back and forth numerous times depending on the medium etc.  I know little about networking etc and thought perhaps some of you have had experience yourselves with fiberoptic internet service and gaming etc.  Currently I have cable and never experience lag during gaming, I was wondering if all the converting back and fourth from light to electronic through various routers and switches would cause it to be slower than simply using cable?

Thanks for your input in advance!

edited for grammer

Well for me going from cable to Verizon Fios (Fiber Optic), was a huge improvement. I definitly noticed an increase in speed and reliabilty zero lag in games and download times are so much faster. Also just general websurfing is so much better pages come up in an instant. I am really happy with the switch, I'm not sure which company you are looking at but if you have verizon fios in your area i couldn't recommend it highly enough.

That's good to know...thanks for the feedback.  I was considering AT&T, they have  a pretty reasonable package deal including FOIS but this is actually the first time I heard of it so I was unsure.  Glad to hear you had a positive improvement in IS.

Thanks again

I've used Qwest Fiberoptics and Cable One Cable.

They were both pretty much the same, except the cable had about a 10-15 ping lower average. Qwest had a little less downtime and a more stable and constant speed, though.

I am on fiber optic now, but came from DSL (I live in a really rural place).

My connection speed is 20 mps and is available upto 30. I am very happy with it, the latency is virtually nil on my end. That said, a lot of games and servers are slow, and often times it comes down to a lowest common denominator,

Originally posted by TGSOL

I've used Qwest Fiberoptics and Cable One Cable.

 

They were both pretty much the same, except the cable had about a 10-15 ping lower average. Qwest had a little less downtime and a more stable and constant speed, though.

That's because Qwest "Fiberoptics" aren't.  You plugged into the standard phone line in your house, right?  They didn't run a fiber optic cable directly to your computer, right?  :)

It's a marketting scam by Qwest.  True fiber optics will give you much greater performance, especially on latency.

I have a fibreoptic and get about 40Mbps. It is not needed for MMOs though, in my opinion.

It doesn't matter if you have cable or FIOS for online gaming, what matters is service stability and low ping rates (latency) to your closest first server hub the signal goes out to. Also what other factor is important is location of the game servers.

Almost all MMO and online gaming consists of a client server where the game generates all the world for you, the connection to that server by you requires not much of a data rate to keep you persistent in the game world, a minimum of 256KB to 500KB down speed is required to keep you persistent in online games with minimum to no lag on modern day MMO's. A upload speed of 200-400KB is sufficient for all online games unless your hosting a online game then you would want this to be high as possible.

People don't realize how little speed is needed to play online games with no lag, the real determining factor that plays a significant role in if you will lag is latency and service stability. Factor in also TTL numbers, if your TTL is low and the server is across the world you can sometimes experience lagging out and crashing on a game, this is because the packets that reach each server hub lower the TTL number by 1 and when they reach 0 it will send it back to your computer requesting the info to resend basically this can happen to people on cheap connections who have low TTL values and try game on a server half way around world. NOT a problem anymore really but it occasionally happens with improper setup of those values when people use these Internet speedup programs.

The short answer is cable and fios are the same for online gaming, if you experienced lag over a stable cable connection you probably either have high latency, or the server is far away. Also some other factors such as background programs using bandwidth while you game can be an issue.

Edit: I would also like to note that many players, probably exceeding 90% don't know the difference between latency lag and graphical lag. Because of this and how many people just play their game at max settings they often blame the Internet connection for their lag when really they are experiencing lag due to graphical lag, slower computers.

All, thanks for the info, all was helpful.

Cheers