If you ask most people what they look for in a broadband connection for gaming, they will say speed. Fast broadband for gaming. The faster the better. In reality, speed is not the most important variable for online gaming. Latency is. And the two are not the same thing.
This article explains what actually determines how good a broadband connection is for gaming, why the conventional focus on download speed misses the point, and what to look for when choosing a broadband package if gaming is a priority in your household.
The difference between speed and latency
Download speed measures how much data can travel from the internet to your device per second. It determines how quickly you can download a game file, a software update, or a stream of video.
Latency, also called ping, measures how long it takes for a small packet of data to travel from your device to a server and back again. It is measured in milliseconds (ms). A lower ping means your inputs reach the game server faster and the server’s response reaches you faster.
For online gaming, especially in fast-paced multiplayer games, latency is the variable that defines the experience. The difference between a 10ms ping and a 60ms ping is the difference between your character responding instantaneously and a perceptible delay between pressing a button and seeing the result on screen. In competitive games, a 60ms ping can make the difference between hitting and missing a shot. In a racing game, it affects braking points. In any game with real-time interaction with other players, high latency is felt immediately.
Download speed, by comparison, matters much less during actual gameplay. Online gaming typically uses only 3 to 10 Mbps of download bandwidth. A connection delivering 50 Mbps with 10ms latency will perform significantly better for gaming than a connection delivering 500 Mbps with 60ms latency.
What causes high latency?
Latency in a broadband connection comes from two main sources: the physical distance data has to travel, and the number and nature of the network points it passes through along the way.
For home broadband connections, the type of technology is the most significant factor. ADSL connections, which use copper wire for the entire journey, have the highest typical latency, often 20 to 50ms just for the local loop before data has even left the neighbourhood. FTTC connections replace copper with fibre for part of the journey but retain copper for the final stretch, which introduces latency. Full fibre FTTP connections run fibre optic cable all the way to your home, and because light travels through fibre faster and with less resistance than electrical signals through copper, latency is inherently lower.
Full fibre connections from providers including Carnival Internet typically deliver latency of under 10ms on the local loop, giving a total round-trip ping to most UK game servers of 15 to 25ms. This is an excellent figure for competitive gaming on any platform.
Network congestion is the other major latency driver. On FTTC connections, the shared infrastructure at the street cabinet means that as more people in your area come online in the evening, latency can increase alongside the drop in download speeds. Full fibre connections with dedicated physical connections to each home are not subject to this kind of neighbourhood-level congestion in the same way.
Download speed for gaming: when it does matter
While download speed during gameplay is almost irrelevant, it matters enormously for getting to the point of playing. Modern games are large. AAA titles regularly exceed 100GB on release, with day-one patches sometimes adding another 20 to 30GB on top. Expansions, DLC, and seasonal updates add to this over the life of a game.
On a 50 Mbps connection, a 100GB download takes around four and a half hours. On a 550 Mbps full fibre connection, the same download takes under 25 minutes. On a 1,000 Mbps connection, it takes around 13 minutes. For anyone who wants to play a new game on release day, or who regularly downloads updates before jumping online, this difference in download speed is a genuine quality-of-life improvement.
The same principle applies to game installations, which increasingly happen on the fly as you play, and to the background updates that consoles and PCs download automatically. A fast connection means these happen quickly and quietly in the background rather than becoming a frustration.
Cloud gaming: the demands are different
Cloud gaming services including Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, and PlayStation Plus Premium work differently from traditional gaming. Rather than running the game on your device, the game runs on a powerful server elsewhere and the result is streamed to your screen in real time, much like streaming a video.
This means cloud gaming has higher bandwidth requirements than traditional online gaming, while still requiring low latency. Microsoft recommends at least 20 Mbps download for 1080p cloud gaming at 60 frames per second, and recommends 50 Mbps or higher for 1080p at higher quality settings. For cloud gaming at 4K where available, requirements increase further.
Latency matters even more for cloud gaming than for traditional gaming, because the latency in cloud gaming includes not just the network round trip but also the processing time on the remote server and the decompression of the video stream at your end. This makes the already demanding latency requirements of competitive gaming even more stringent for cloud services. A full fibre connection with sub-10ms local latency gives cloud gaming services the best possible foundation.
Gaming on multiple consoles simultaneously
Many households have more than one gamer. Two people playing online at the same time, one on PlayStation and one on PC, or siblings in different rooms both gaming, is entirely normal. A connection that handles one session well may not handle two, particularly if others in the household are also streaming or working.
This is where download speed starts to matter for gaming households even beyond the download consideration. Two simultaneous gaming sessions use 10 to 20 Mbps of download bandwidth combined. Add 4K streaming for others in the house, video calls, and smart home traffic, and a household of moderate size can sustain consistent demand for 100 Mbps or more even when all activities are considered modest individually.
Carnival Internet’s Boost package at 550 Mbps is designed for exactly this kind of busy household: multiple users, multiple activities, with enough headroom that nobody has to think about what else is happening on the connection.
What about Wi-Fi for gaming?
The best broadband connection in the world will not deliver optimal gaming performance if your device is connecting over weak or congested Wi-Fi. For serious gaming, particularly on desktop PCs, a wired ethernet connection from your router to your device eliminates the variability and additional latency that Wi-Fi introduces.
For consoles in rooms where running a cable is not practical, Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7 routers with strong signal coverage make a meaningful difference. The eero 7 and eero Max 7 routers available as add-ons to Carnival Internet packages both support Wi-Fi 7, which offers lower latency and more stable connections for gaming compared to older Wi-Fi standards. In a household with multiple gamers using Wi-Fi on different devices, the improved performance of Wi-Fi 7 is genuinely noticeable.
Is broadband for gaming different in different cities?
The latency you experience when gaming depends partly on the location of the game servers you connect to. Most major game publishers operate servers in multiple UK and European locations, and your connection will typically route you to the nearest one. In practice, this means that gamers in Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, and Reading will all get excellent latency to UK and European servers on a full fibre connection, with the specific figure varying slightly by geography rather than dramatically.
What differs more meaningfully by location is the availability of full fibre broadband itself. If full fibre is available at your address, you have access to the low-latency infrastructure that gaming demands. If you are still on ADSL or FTTC, the upgrade to full fibre is the single most impactful change you can make to your gaming experience.
Choosing a broadband package for gaming
Based on all of the above, here is a practical framework for choosing a broadband package if gaming is a significant part of your household’s internet usage.
Prioritise full fibre over speed tier. A 115 Mbps full fibre connection with 10ms latency will outperform a 500 Mbps FTTC connection with 30ms latency for gaming every time. Get the technology right first, then consider the speed tier.
Choose a speed tier based on your household’s total demand, not just gaming. If you have multiple users, streaming, working from home, and gaming happening simultaneously, go for Boost or Max. If you live alone or with one other person with modest usage beyond gaming, Go is more than sufficient.
Consider the router. For a household with multiple gamers on Wi-Fi, an eero 7 or eero Max 7 gives you Wi-Fi 7 performance with low-latency wireless that makes a real difference to gaming on consoles and portable devices.
To see which Carnival Internet packages are available in your area, enter your postcode on our coverage checker.
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