Switch to Fiber?

[wrathoftank]

So I have the option to switch to a FTTH connection from Century link.  It would be a symmetrical connection of 100 down and up.  But is it worth it?  I currently have a 100 down and 5 up cable line from Charter Communications, and it seems pretty good most of the time.  Routing is my biggest concern, are most ISP pretty good at it, I believe charter has a bigger national network, which has me believing that routing might be better.  Is the improved latency from fiber a difference maker?

 

Any network gurus want to weigh in?

[major masingil]

I'm not a network guru, but I have definitely experienced and improved connection with fiber over coax or dsl.  It has been a very consistent connection. My jitter is usually in the +- 5 to 10 ms range. There are still some spikes which are larger, but that depends on what is happening with the other connections on my network. One item of note, I'm in the states.

[MrWhooz]

I'm not a network guru either , but the fiber cable is far superior than coaxial when it comes to ping times and upload speeds.

[imts_maul]

Fiber is such a superior connection, more stable, lower ping rate, faster...

[Od1n]

since you already have a 100mbit connection all that will change with fiber for you is that the short distance between your house to the distribution node will also be fiber, depening on where that node is in hour neighbourhood this might only be a few meters (or up to 100-200m)

overall this will not change all that much, lightspeed on a few (hundred) meters compared to electric copper signal, your ping might be a few milliseconds lower but i wouldnt expect a huge difference

and even that distance might already be on fiber for you, so maybe there isnt any ping change at all

 

 

anyhow if you arent someone who uploads youtube videos or other stuff constantly you might as well stay unless there are major issues that you have with your ISP

having a symetrical 100mbit connection is nice, but you need to ask yourself how often will you make use out of that

i mean for gaming it wont change anything, you can already play perfectly fine on a symetrical 0,5mbit connection

[wrathoftank]

since you already have a 100mbit connection all that will change with fiber for you is that the short distance between your house to the distribution node will also be fiber, depening on where that node is in hour neighbourhood this might only be a few meters (or up to 100-200m)

overall this will not change all that much, lightspeed on a few (hundred) meters compared to electric copper signal, your ping might be a few milliseconds lower but i wouldnt expect a huge difference

and even that distance might already be on fiber for you, so maybe there isnt any ping change at all

 

 

anyhow if you arent someone who uploads youtube videos or other stuff constantly you might as well stay unless there are major issues that you have with your ISP

having a symetrical 100mbit connection is nice, but you need to ask yourself how often will you make use out of that

i mean for gaming it wont change anything, you can already play perfectly fine on a symetrical 0,5mbit connection

That's kind of what I was thinking, my ping would likely improved 1-3 ms with my approximately 100 meter run to the node because my cable company (Charter) already has an extensive fiber backbone.  So latency improvement would be negligible unless the new fiber company (Century Link) has better routing.  However there are times I wish I had a higher upload, although I would probably never use more than 10 mbps.  Overall it would cost me a few hundred bucks to install, and I'd be locked into a contract with an ISP I don't know a lot about, I'd be paying slightly higher monthly fees too.  The unknown of a new ISP is what really concerns me, I don't know how good there service and equipment is...