I have had Fios for over a year and I was initially discouraged when first using it. I came from using a cable modem connection playing computer games with approximately 15-20ms ping to a server constantly. When I got Fios it was the same server and game but now I had 30-45ms. I ran tracerts and noticed that the second hop which is to verizon for most people was 5-10 ms, mine is 20 always at the lowest. My router hop which is the first is >1, all normal. Right off the bat that tells me my ping is double what it should be leaving the verizon initial hop.
This means I can only acheive at best 20ms, but should be 10ms? The other thing I noticed in my tracerts was occasionally my initial hop to verizon would ping highly always well into the 40's and 50's. When I go to websites like verizon.com the 7th hop gets 55 ms constantly. I go to google.com same hop and some others ping into the 60's, others timeout. Basically what I am saying is my Fios internet does not get the ping ratings I was expecting when comparing to other internet providers in my area connecting to the same sites and servers. The first hop is 20ms and should be 10 this is the starting point in my opinion because verizon has no control after that. My download and upload speeds are good its just the ping. Interesting also is they offer two locations for speedtest.net in Baltimore,MD and one by reliable hosting has 160ms, the other by comcast is 45ms...
My friends have Fios and they live close I am going to get them to run a tracert to the same sites as me and compare. I know that when I play xbox 360 with these same people the ping indicator is scaled with 4 bars. There are many times I am the only person with 3 bars and they are with 4. This makes me beleive that my internet is slower than advertised for technical reasons. Is it possible that because I am in an apartment and they are in a house their install was done right?
This is considered because my girlfriend was here during the install and the tech had to repair things just to hook it up. The lady (supervisor) on the phone told him to just hook it up, knowing it would give us slower speeds. My girlfriend overheard this conversation, the tech told her he was going to get some parts because he didnt want to just make it work and not give us what we pay for. Maybe he could only do so much and I am not getting the full potential. That fact that his supervisor told him to hook it up knowing we were not getting what we paid for is disturbing. Maybe someone has had a similar issue with their internet like this and its been fixed? Bad connection outside or something?
It seems that FIOS latency is inherently higher than many connections using other physical media (like DSL or cable). There may be quite a few things that you can do locally, depending on how you're using your connection.
First, if you're using any wireless LAN, try a wired connection instead for purposes of testing. Latency on WLANs can be all over the map due to transient radio interference and signal strengths.
If you're doing PC gaming, there are things you can do to tune your IP stack and network interface card configuration to better handle the way a fiber connection passes traffic. If you go to dslreports.com, you will find pointers to some tools. If you have a Mac, there's actually a small utility from Apple that will tune your machine (larger retransmit window sizes, etc. )
Know that the "ping times" reported by game software are an approximation at best. Don't expect the absolute values (e.g. 10ms) to be consistent across games or consoles, or to match what you'd get from utilities running on your computer.
The truth is that depending on how you're using your connection (and what games you're playing, and whether you use voice chat), latency (ping time) is only part of the equation. "Jitter" which is the difference in latency from packet to packet can make even more of a difference. For example a connection may be able to tolerate relatively high latency, but if the size of the delay varies a lot, things can fall apart quickly. This is especially true of things like streaming video and voice chat or VOIP.
Your idea of using traceroute (or tracert under DOS/windows) is a good one if you want to collect something like consistent data. One other thing to be aware of as a gamer, is that the Actiontec routers you get with the FIOS service have a known issue where one of the intermal memory tables (the NAT table, specifically) can fill up and run out of space. If you log into your router's administrative page and read the logs you'll see error messages if this is happening.
Two last things: The nature of the Internet and routing is that things vary a lot. If a router or link goes down, another path will be found, but this takes time and latency will jump up for a while until things settle down. When the link comes back up, the same thing happens. I suppose the message here is to be patient. Sometimes things will stabilize in the time you would have otherwise taken to muck with settings.
Lastly, be careful if you decide to tune your computer's IP stack. Some of those settings will impair either your throughput or your ability to connect at all if you just start poking without reading first about what you're changing and why. If you download some "speed" utility, be sure it's documented to know what a FIOS connection is before you use it.
I hope that helps.
I did some more research about this whole situation and my Multi Dwelling Unit setup. It must be the fact that the connection is split at the MDU ONT and is not one whole connection ran straight into the router through cat5, like single dwellings. I can compare because of my friends using Fios with even less advertised speeds, but lower ping than me in tests, single family house. Theres even two of them on same connection playing the same game with me and they ping lower, lol, 2 miles away.
Verizon offers a maxed out speed to MDU customers at 25/5. If they only offer a speed slower then their capable max this tells me their setup configuration is bottlenecking or delaying the connection. My assumption is the only way they could offer fios to MDU people is using a dsl line in company with coax. Not sure why I need a coax into my router and a ethernet connection from a dsl modem, but I do know dsl is slow. If dsl is involved im feeling thats my bottleneck for my latency. If I am getting 20ms to the ONT and it should be 10 or less..
All I want to know is if other people with Fios that live in a MDU setting experience slower ping response times then expected. If it is what it is thats fine, nothing I can do besides move. But if I got a busted connection, ONT or the setup is wrong I would like to contact tech support and get it resolved.
The problem is I cant type into google, "With Verizon Fios, do multi-dwelling units have higher ping than single family units?" and get answers I am looking for. I just want the technical answer to this issue wether it be a solution or reason, im cool with either.
Thanks
It sounds like you may have figured out what the deal is with your connection. Your latency, if you have a VDSL/VDSL2 connection in your Apartment instead of Fiber to the Unit, would be coming from the Interleaving associated with DSL service. I don't believe anyone has really managed to take a look at the speeds Verizon's VDSL modems can do and what kind of statistics they spit out, but ultimately if they were to disable Interleaving on the line, you should square away to be about 10ms on the first hop, perhaps less. It's basically the same reason AT&T U-Verse is good for speed, but poor for latency, if you've perhaps seen mention of the same thing.
You can ask Verizon and hope they can get someone who has knowledge on why they set up the modems the way they do. Now, if you had a Fiber to the Unit setup, if you managed to get a GPON ONT and an Ethernet connection from the ONT to the router, your latency to the Verizon network would give no issues with reaching a millisecond or less. MoCa adds a few milliseconds to the latency, and running on an older BPON ONT also adds a few milliseconds of latency. Running on VDSL + BPON ONT will add a good chunk of latency. In theory, if Verizon were to open up the floodgates a bit more and the MDU copper was in good shape, they could push VDSL to it's limit, 40-50Mbps down with a lack of Interleaving, and perhaps 10Mbps up. VDSL2, for the ONTs that do support it (they do have a few), can have no issue doing 100Mbps down and up on a theoretical 200Mbps max, considering 100Mbps can run at roughly 1,600ft of twisted cable.
wzulauf, have you been able to find a solution to this problem? my 1st hop after the router is also 20ms always! i live in an mdu and also have a friend who does too that lives a few blocks aways and he doesnt have this issue.
i dont know what to do but i want to try and solve this problem.
@wadood wrote:wzulauf, have you been able to find a solution to this problem? my 1st hop after the router is also 20ms always! i live in an mdu and also have a friend who does too that lives a few blocks aways and he doesnt have this issue.
i dont know what to do but i want to try and solve this problem.
See my post above. It might help explain why you're seeing 20ms latency.
can you explain in english? 🙂
regardless of me understanding your explanation or not above
a friend and i that both live in close to each other...both fios...both mdu...same zipcode
he gets 6ms on his 1st hop after the router and i get a constant 20 on my 1st hop after the router
friend:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms L100.WASHDC-VFTTP-61.verizon-gni.net [96.231.199.1]
me:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms L100.WASHDC-VFTTP-61.verizon-gni.net [96.231.199.1]
how is that possible? whats the explanation? how can i call fios support to fix this?!
This is interesting, and exactly what I was searching for today. I get bad ping results and latency in games. I, too, live in a MDU in the DC area and use the "DSL version" of FIOS. I was looking around for an explanation today and checking out some different ISPs. I would prefer to get some help from Verizon, improve my line quality, and stick with FIOS. My friends enjoy some of the faster paced games and keeping up with them may require a shift to another ISP if Verizon can't help me or the others experiencing the same issues.
Thanks for any help with this issue!
hey kannibal
i thought it was an MDU issue but it is not...i tested it out at a friend who lives in the same area and also in an MDU and he has normal latency less than 10
also had another friend who is an MDU test but in a different area and he has normal pings
there has to be something that we have that is different because this is latency that is stuck at 20 on your 1st hop after the router
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