Is fiber optic cable really better than regular cable for gaming?

This debate has been going on for more than a decade now: does fiber optic cable really make your gaming experience better, or is traditional network cables still good?

On the traditional cable side, we have a fairly old copper infrastructure that relies on coax wires and amplifiers to transmit signals over long distances, at data rates over a single copper wire. about two-thirds the speed of light in a vacuum. Typical cable transfer rates are lower than cable options, although DOCSIS 3.0 allows for 1 Gbps download speeds (but this is not a symmetric connection when the upload speed is up to 100 Mbps) and the next standard DOCSIS 3.1 promises faster speeds of 10 Gbps.

On the optical fiber side, they have newer technology, with data transmitted through light pulses through pipes made of glass. To avoid confusion, notice that today’s cable carriers usually have fiber optic cable as their backbone, and use the cable that usually goes to where you live, while ‘fiber internet’ means fiber optic line to your home. where you live.

While it may seem that data will travel faster through fiber optic cables, the refractive properties of the glass will slow things down, and it is actually moving about 31% slower than air, so the speed of This photon is equivalent to the electrons in the coaxial cable. However, there is no need for amplifiers so much as the data-carrying photons can propagate further than electrical connections that have to deal with wire resistance.

Fiber optic cable generally offers faster speeds due to more modern infrastructure and more recent deployment. Some of the better products, such as Google Fiber, offer symmetric connections up to 1 Gbps.

So when considering the question of bandwidth, fiber optic cable is currently completely superior, because in most cases that service gives much better download and upload quality. This when playing games means you can load games faster, more powerful.

However, for multiplayer games, it is not completely bandwidth dependent, as gaming uses a small amount of bandwidth, for example <1 Mbps. Instead, a good gaming experience depends on a constant and uninterrupted stream of data. In terms of quality rather than quantity.

The question of quality is more difficult to answer because ISPs (network service providers) will not accept average connections or legacy infrastructure. But we might find a better connection if we look at metrics other than bandwidth, including latency, measuring the time it takes for the signal to get from transmitter to receiver, and jitter – quantifying the difference about incoming packets over time.

ISPs don’t advertise their latency and jitter, but PCMag’s data from late 2016 provides a deeper insight into the issue. When they add latency and jitter points together to create a number to measure quality, the top three providers (EPB, Verizon Fios, and Google Fiber) all use fiber technology, although some do. cable level has often made it to the top ten. That’s because fiber optic cable has newer infrastructure with fewer amplifiers, and because it’s less susceptible to interference from copper conductors.

Another tool to measure connection quality is Lag Report. This helpful website identifies your current connection (“Optimum Online” in the screenshot above on the left) and sets an alternate connection for your region on the right. Scores above 90 are considered ‘Excellent’ and these measurements are based on latency, packet loss, and jitter in Ethernet-connected League of Legends matches over the past 30 days. Here we can confirm that while the fiber optic provider still delivers a decent connection, the fiber optic competitor Verizon Fios offers lower latency, less packet loss, despite the same jitter. Lag Report can also show data throughout the day.

The answer to the cable vs. fiber debate in general would be, fiber optic connections are better for gaming as they provide faster downloads and higher quality connections with lower latency and jitter. . However, test your home network yourself with the tools mentioned above to find the best quality provider for the best gaming experience.

Source: PCGamer