Feb 21, 2023 | Home Technology

Nothing is more frustrating for gamers than pushing the Fire button and...and...and...now it shoots. Too late. Your character is dead, and your opponent is mocking you through your headset. You needed to shoot in real-time, not delayed. The dang home internet speed was way too slow. Between slow download and upload speeds, restricted bandwidth without enough Mbps, and maybe some bad wi-fi thanks to a slow router, gameplay can be, well, not a lot of fun. Isn’t that the point, after all, to have fun? Is your current home internet ruining your gameplay?

Whether you’re playing on an Xbox, PlayStation, PC, or another gaming console, you need a solid, high-speed home internet connection brought to you by a solid internet service provider that takes your online fun seriously.

If you have satellite internet, DSL, or cable internet, you know what it’s like to have a slow connection and what it means to have a bad gaming experience. You experience it every day. But if you have a fiber optic internet connection, your online gaming world is a happier virtual place to live.

Why is fiber a better option for serious online gaming?

Higher Bandwidth

You need fast speeds. Until fiber optic internet came along, most internet connections were less than 200 megabits-per-second (Mbps), many of them even slower, down to under 10 Mbps, especially in rural areas. And that was just the download speeds. Upload speeds on traditional internet connections are often around 10% of the download speeds. As online games got more and more complex and graphics quality increased, serious players needed faster speeds. Higher bandwidth improves the immersive experience of many of the best first-person shooter and fantasy games.

This is especially true in multiplayer games, where your connection needs to keep up with tons of data being sent every second. The type of internet connection you use matters.

When it comes to high-speed internet, fiber internet can’t be beat. It’s the fastest internet connection on the planet, the only current broadband technology that can offer a true gigabit-per-second (Gbps or GIG) internet plan that actually delivers a gig all the time.

Symmetrical Upload & Download

One unique characteristic of fiber internet is symmetrical upload and download speeds. As mentioned above, most internet connections offer lopsided speeds, with upload speeds significantly slower than download speeds. For example, if your download speed on cable internet is 100Mbps, your upload speed might be 10Mbps or even slower. On satellite or DSL, those speeds will be even slower, and the disparity between upload and download greater.

While this may be fine for low-speed applications such as email or chat, slower upload speeds can hinder gameplay and cause you to lose even though you’re pushing the button as fast as you can. In some cases, it can make the game impossible to play.

Fiber internet offers the same speeds up and down, providing the best internet experience and superior gaming experience.

Lower Ping/Latency and Jitter

Connection speed is one thing — an important thing — but there are two other issues that can cause slow gameplay: ping/latency and jitter.

Ping and latency are the time it takes for a signal to leave the game console or other device, head to the game server, and get back to the gaming device, measured in milliseconds. High latency is bad. Just like with golf, lower latency and ping numbers are better. Most gamers consider anything under 50 milliseconds to be decent ping. But what if you could get those numbers into single digits? With fiber internet, you can.

Fiber internet also reduces jitter, which is the unintended change in ping or latency over time, causing hiccups in data packets sent between the game console or device and the game server. Really bad jitter can cause data packets to arrive out of order, ruining your gaming experience.

While some would argue that bad ping/latency and jitter only happen over the wi-fi router, they can occur just as easily over a wired connection, especially with an ethernet cable instead of a fiber strand. Because fiber is a clearer, more consistent signal, jitter is significantly reduced.

To know what speed you’re getting, take a speed test.

Not a Shared Connection

One of the biggest complaints with cable internet is that it’s a shared connection. When the neighbors are home, bandwidth to each home is reduced because more people are sharing the incoming neighborhood line. The signal coming into the modem is therefore reduced, providing less bandwidth at a time of day when everyone wants to hop online.

Available bandwidth goes way down when the neighbors get home and want to relax with their latest streaming service. While watching a single show might not slow down the connection significantly, the more people get online, the worse it gets.

If you read the fine print on the cable internet service agreement, it says “up to” the speed you are paying for. The FCC allows that claim if at least one customer can get that signal strength at any given time. It does not guarantee everyone gets it all the time. With fiber internet, each home gets a dedicated line.

Futureproof

Cable internet is about to reach its bandwidth limit. It won’t be long until it will be entirely obsolete. Already, most of the internet infrastructure worldwide has switched to fiber optics, including almost all of the undersea connections that carry data around the world. Why the change? Fiber optics can carry over 700x more data than copper.

How does this apply to gaming? Games are getting more complex and require more bandwidth to carry all the new data from the console to the game server and back. Only an ultra-fast internet connection can accomplish this. Fiber optic internet offers fast download and fast upload, providing a superior gaming experience today and continuing for a very long time.

Conclusion

In each market, fiber internet providers will be the best internet providers. Fiber offers higher-speed connection with low latency and ping, better jitter rates, unlimited data, and an overall better online gaming experience.