Business ISP Trunk Networks has launched a new UK broadband provider called Leetline, which is targeted toward fans of online multiplayer video games and claims to offer a network that “delivers low latency, high bandwidth internet connectivity” to many satisfied gamers. Not unlike many other reputable ISPs.
The provider’s website claims they “block ports, filter, shape or contend your traffic in any way” and will “take the shortest possible path to your gaming server(s).” Apparently they do this by “having extensive peering arrangements with other networks, globally. We are a LINX connection partner and also peer at LONAP, LINX Manchester, France-IX, AMS-IX. We continue to invest heavily in our core infrastructure to make sure that our network is never congested. With Leetline you won’t experience high latency during peak times.”
The ISP appears to offer a mix of ADSL, FTTC, FTTP and G.fast based broadband packages on Openreach’s national UK network, which are all accompanied by unlimited usage allowances, a 12 month contract term, static IP address (IPv4 and v6) and a “free” wireless router (£12 delivery charge) but they don’t say what model (gamers are perhaps more likely to want to know such details).
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The prices are roughly average, so neither super cheap nor super expensive when compared with the wider industry. However we should caveat that no ISP can generally promise that you “won’t experience high latency during peak times” because such things can also be caused by elements that are not within the ISPs control (e.g. congested game servers, wider internet faults or issues within your own local network).
Darren Elsom, Director of Trunk Networks, said last month:
“Gamers spend huge amounts of money obtaining the best computers and associated hardware and are often disappointed that the broadband they use is not of equivalent standard. As gamers and parents of children who spend time gaming we understand the importance of a high quality Internet connection, which is why we launched LeetLine.
As one of our customers put it, ‘If you have ever missed a pentakill or chicken dinner due to lag, now you don’t have to!’.”
We’re always a little bit sceptical when an ISP claims to offer a multiplayer optimised service for online video games because there’s a limit to how much you can tweak such connections in order to extract improvements in latency. Some specific tweaks may also result in a negative impact elsewhere, although this varies depending upon the connection technology being used.
In fact most ISPs setup their networks in the same broad way as Leetline does and there are plenty of providers that could make the same sort of claims (AAISP, iDNET, Zen Internet etc.), albeit without specifically advertising themselves as being designed for multiplayer gamers (these days it’s just kind of expected).
At the end of the day your latency (ping times) depends most of all on the capabilities of the physical connection technology itself (e.g. FTTP vs FTTC), remote server performance (e.g. the server for the game you’re connecting to) and your own network setup / configuration. A good ISP routing / peering arrangement does help and so does maintaining an uncongested network but, as above, other ISPs could make similar claims.
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However Leetline does pledge to take complaints about poor connectivity to specific game servers seriously. “If there is a problem we won’t simply say “It’s your gaming server”. Send us the trace route of where you’re trying to get to and we will make sure that you’re taking the fastest route,” states their website. We like that.
The “fastest route” part is interesting. With VM I’ve got all the (download) speed I need right now, but it seems random whether my traffic takes the scenic route. One minute, motoring, next minute stuck behind caravans and tractors.
(this is pure speculation on my part)
Agreed. I was thinking about this also with VM. I can remember years ago people on cable having superior ping/connection stability. As much as I enjoy having really speedy downloads/uploads I preferred having the stability/lower ping on BT. I used to get as low as 5ms to Google and on Virgin it’s quite a bit higher. Considering it’s FTTP too, I thought it’d be sub 5ms.
“I used to get as low as 5ms to Google…”
Oh god forbid your search for cat videos takes a few milliseconds longer. End of the world stuff right here.
In modern gaming milliseconds can matter. They can make the difference between an action being processed immediately and waiting for a time due to netcode.
It’s something that wasn’t as important previously but is definitely a thing now. I have had to work with departments optimising in this way to appease professional gamers.
@ohnoes
Except if those cat videos are on a server thousands of miles away…
FTTP would make gaming on US/RU servers much better vs FTTC/4G.
Yes in gaming Ping/Latency matters but for googling (until their gaming product/service arrives) ermm NO. You would not see or likely feel any difference between a 5ms ping or a 25ms ping searching for your cat videos.
Also the statement regarding to expect pings constantly under 5ms just because you have fibre is ridiculous. You are never going to get that constantly, a server on the other side of the world and the information to/from it depends on far more than just your silly home FTTP connection making things fast.
A tricky sales pitch to pull off – the protocol that binds the Internet and indeed most large core networks together couldn’t care less about latency locally let alone to remote Internet sites, it just doesn’t use it as a metric to make decisions.
I do not understand how they even think ““take the shortest possible path to your gaming server(s).” equals lowest ping either. The shortest (Example going via 5 hops instead of say 6,7 or even 8) is not always the fastest path.
As for some of the comments they seem just as daft.
This is interesting, but… I’m on VM atm and it feeds me with all the DL speed I need to feed my thirst of the internet, so yh erm..this provider will need to offer me something better if they ever want to grab people like me, because I am one of those gamers btw.
If all you care about is download speed your priorities are quite different from most gaming seriously online.
serious gamers want low ping times and if they stream they want reliable upload speeds, bt’s fibre services are much better for that than virgins
Speak for yourself where i used to live the upload on Virgin was faster than any BT FTTC service.
Hmm this story appears to have totally forgotten that IDnet offers an exclusive ‘gamers package’ promising low latency, no port blocking and fastest connections, all for a rather high £60 a month!
So if this new provider is less then it’s already undercutting the competition..
I need a fast connection for GeForce Now game streaming service do low pings matter, and need to really decide on what to do, I’ll look into this one. Along with other providers.
Interesting concept but can be acheived by using a gaming/high-quality privacy VPN.
You have to get from your ISP to the VPN service so the ISP doing it all is the best way.
For the best VPN results you need a VPN client that finds the best server in terms of latency to itself and has some way to work out the latency through that server to the end game.
Do any do that? It’s a software defined networking thing almost.
Depends what international partners your ISP has, it’s less of an issue in first world countries.
I believe in the end this will offer nothing special unless they offer fibre to the home.
Virgin did something similar with coax (Vivid 200 gamer) and there’s no huge benefit to the gamer ping constant 200meg download speed apart from the supposed download speed they were offering.
£10 a month more expensive than bt or zen for 40/10 and those 2 will already give a 5-10ms ping unless your way up north.
Will it keep the low ping if other devices are connected!