What Is The Best Broadband For Gaming?

We all know that broadband plays a crucial role in all the areas of gaming from casual play to competitive eSports to content creation, such as streaming. The quality of your broadband connection, alot of the time, dictates how enjoyable your gaming experience is. Having a poor broadband connection limits your playing capabilities, creates frustration for you as a player and also puts you at a disadvantage against your online opponents. A strong and secure connection eliminates these problems, and actually benefits you as a gamer. So, let’s jump into the technical side of broadband and breakdown each element to explain what is the best broadband for gaming?

In a nuteshell, the best broadband for gaming consists of:

• Ultragast Broadband Speeds
• Fast Ping
• Low Latency
• High Bandwidth
• FTTP Connection

Ultrafast Broadband Speeds

The broadband speeds within your household has an impact on your gaming. Most video game manufacturers suggest the minimum broadband speed for gaming is as little download speed as 3Mbps. However, gaming with 3Mbps is definitely not the best broadband for gaming as you are more than likely going to suffer from lag and you will encounter very long download times. As cliche as it might sound, the best broadband speed for gaming is the fastest that you can get in your area. The faster your broadband speed, the more data you can receive from the server. Almost every household in the UK can benefit from superfast fibre broadband speeds of 80Mbps and others can benefit from speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (1Gbps). 

Gaming Broadband can provide UK gamers with speeds of up to 1,000Mbps in selected areas. To see what broadband speeds you can receive, use our availability checker.

Fast Ping & Low Latency For Gaming

The terms ping and latency are often used in the gaming community, but what exactly do they mean? Latency is the time (milliseconds) it takes for a signal to be transmitted from your device to a server on the internet and back to your device again. Ping is the signal transmitted from your device to a server on the internet and back again. When gaming you want a faster ping and a lower latency. The faster your ping and the lower your latency, the faster your device and the server you are playing on can communicate with one another.

An example of how a faster ping and lower latency benefits your gaming. Have you ever been playing an online shooter game where you have shot the enemy first but they have still come out with the kill, leaving you baffled? Well, the reason for that is because they had a faster ping and lower-latency than you did. Therefore, their shots registered with the game’s server faster than yours. Not only does faster ping and lower latency give you a competitive advantage over the opponents, it also results in you experiencing much smoother gameplay and reduces the chance of packet loss (a form of lag). 

The network carriers that Gaming Broadband use to provide broadband to their customers, utilise peering arrangements with some major entertainment companies, such as Microsoft, Google and Netflix. These peering arrangements result in a faster ping and lower latency for the players using our services, enhancing their gaming experience. If you are interested in learning more about the broadband for gaming that we provide, then take a read of our broadband page.

High Bandwidth 

Bandwidth is the amount of data that is transmitted over an internet connection in a certain amount of time. When you are gaming, it is important to have a higher bandwidth as this ensures that you are much less-likely to encounter any lag as more data in a shorter time period is able to be transferred between your console and the game’s server. In the average household, the level of bandwidth for a broadband line will fluctuate as it is affected by how many activities are taking place on the connection. Your bandwidth is affected by multiple factors, such as:

• Streaming content (YouTube, Netflix, Twitch)
• Downloading large files
• Transferring files
• Multiple people using the same connection

One of the best ways to increase your bandwidth when gaming is to install a new, second broadband line into your home. Installing a new broadband line into your home means you can still have your usual broadband for general usage, but you will have a separate connection, specifically to be used for gaming. This will significantly reduce your bandwidth as it is no longer being shared between as many devices and you will be able to game with a much smoother, more consistent connection. Arguably, this is one of the best methods for a gamer to improve their broadband connection, but will come at a cost of two broadband plans a month. To install a second broadband line with Gaming Broadband you can use our availability checker and choose one of our Fibre + or GFast + plans.

It should also be mentioned that playing over a wired connection (ethernet cable directly from your router to your console/gaming device) will result in much higher broadband speeds for gaming. A non-wired connection (WiFi) is usually slower than a wired connection. Physical objects can cause interefence resulting in low bandwidth and low broadband speeds when gaming over Wi-Fi. Therefore, it is always recommended to use a wired ethernet connection when possible.

FTTP over FTTC

Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) is the most common infrastructure used to provide superfast fibre broadband to households and utilises a fibre optical cable and a copper telephone cable. FTTC allows for speeds of up to 80Mbps (in some areas up to 330Mbps with GFast). Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) is a different way of delivering fibre broadband to households and consists of a fibre optical cable running directly from an internet exchange to a household. FTTP allows for speeds of up to 1000Mbps. It is important to mention that FTTP is not available everywhere. On households located near to an internet exchange can benefit from FTTP.

As mentioned previously, the faster broadband speed you can get, the better your gaming experience will be. Seeing as FTTP allows for speeds of up to 1000Mbps, it is clearly the better option. Additionally, as FTTP uses a fibre optical cable directly from an exchange to a household, the connectivity along the long will be more consistent and reliable, minimalising the amount of lag/packet losses you encounter. 

As you can see there are many elements that ideally make up the best broadband for gaming. Overall, speaking technically, the best broadband for gaming is one with each of the following:

• FTTP Connection
• Superfast Speeds
• Fast ping
• Low latency
• High bandwidth.

As explained throughout, Gaming Broadband can provide you with such connectivity. Our Pure Fibre plan allows for each of these factors to be met, making it the best broadband for gaming that we offer. However, if that plan is not available in your location, we have many other plans that can provide you with superfast broadband for enhancing your gaming. To see the best broadband plan that you can get with Gaming Broadband, use our availability checker. For any further information, or if you have any questions then be sure to contact us.