Broadband ISP iDNET Launch 1.8Gbps UK CityFibre Gamer Package
Business and residential broadband ISP iDNET has just become the latest provider to launch a symmetric speed package based off CityFibre’s top 2.5Gbps wholesale tier (advertised at an average speed of 1.8Gbps), which is being targetted at fans of online multiplayer gaming (not that raw speed really makes a difference to gaming at this level).
The new Gamer Max City Fibre package costs £63 per month and comes with an included ASUS ROG Rapture-AX6000 (rrp £225.00) router, which boasts the necessary 2.5Gbps LAN/WAN ports and WiFi 6 speeds, on a 24-month minimum contract term. As this is iDNET then customers will also benefit from static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, UK-based support, free installation and an 800Mbps minimum guaranteed download speed.
The same update also confirms our earlier report (here) by revealing that iDNET will launch a similar package via Openreach’s new 1.8Gbps tier (average download speeds of 1.7Gbps) from June 2024. But just remember that Openreach’s FTTP network limits upload speeds on this tier to 120Mbps. Credits to Blake and Thinkbroadband for spotting the development.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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so what’s the latency on it, most importantly for gamers ?
The same I bet as marketing stuff for gamers is just a cash cow for teens to convince their parents to upgrade.
I wonder if there is any additional information about what the “gamer” label gets, like do they use some more sophisticated queue management algorithm, or is your traffic given priority?
I am not in the coverage area of this network so it’s just an academic curiosity for me.
It’s just marketing bum fluff.
What’s the reason for Openreach’s 120Mbps upload limit? Different tech than these alt nets?
G-PON, not XG or XGS-PON
@name GPON can support way beyond 120Mb/s – I know because my CityFibre connection is GPON and I’m getting 1Gb/s upload. Openreach *always* provision their residential lines with artificially low upload. I’m guessing they want to differentiate it from business class stuff so they can charge more, CityFibre and other Altnets are the only ones who are going to offer faster upload speeds for residential until Openreach feel threatened enough to change that practice.
“ 800Mbps minimum guaranteed download speed.” Much congestion?
its due to Cityfibre’s circuits being a mess.
Is it just me or has the British public been fooled into thinking bandwidth is the only factor that makes a Internet connection good for gaming.
I would of thought latency is far more important.
Bandwidth does help with the waiting for the game to download, particularly now some of these games are 120GB+
But for the actual multiplayer part you could probably get by with as little as 1Mbit or less in most games if the latency was decent (unless you are streaming the gameplay to youtube/twitch.etc)
Yes faster speeds do help if you have a busy household as this helps stop maxing out your connection thus lower load latency
Nice to see someone else launching faster speeds for those that would like it. And in before people say “no one needs it” so what give people choice on what to spend their money on!
Gamer Max
Full Fibre – FTTH 2000/1000
Not 2.5 and not XGS-PON, That might just be my area though?.
Yes, CityFibre have a step-down 2Gbps tier for GPON areas that have yet to be 100% upgraded to XGS-PON, which usually acts to support the 2.5Gbps XGS-PON tier (although ISPs can sell the packages separately if they want). This may also help to explain why iDNET has chosen a 1.8Gbps average for the advertised speed.
Yeah, thats what is being offered in my area 2000/1000. What I don’t understand is I thought new CityFibre rollouts after April 2023 were getting XGS-PON. Since my area was rolled out after September 2023 I assumed that would be the case, except I’m obviously in a GPON area.
Not that I’m too bothered as I have no need for those speeds currently, just a little strange as it conflicted news stories claiming they were switching to the faster standard.
Interesting — looks like they now only peer in London, and with only 4x10Gb links: https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/12496 (previously they were also peering in Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, and Stockholm). A shame because IMO one of IDNet’s USPs was their low latency throughout Europe.
Assuming they maintain peeringDB. They seem to have lots of peering based upon BGP:
https://bgp.tools/as/12496#connectivity
As long as the upstreams are decent this hot-potato routing doesn’t need to be inferior to cold-potato. They could quite easily have their data going along the same cables it would’ve had they been peering at those locations themselves. They’re relying on a third party either way.
@Dialup “lots” is a relative term. They have 110, which puts them joint 100th in the UK for network with the most peers (see https://bgp.tools/rankings/GB?sort=peering). But there are plenty of better peered networks — e.g. Vorboss has 1,749 peers, Mythic Beasts has 1,430 peers, and Merula has 740 peers.
@XGS it’s true that IDNet didn’t own layer 1 networks going to all those cities — but IMO the distinction is that they had more control. It’s well known that the major transit providers can get into disputes causing connectivity issues — IMO the more traffic that avoids transit and goes via peering the better.
I’ve found that the number of peers shown and counted may not always be truly representative of what there could actually be, unless the ASN directly feeds in their full table. Often it’s less than the true number. Those which directly feed on bgp.tools will show “Direct Feed” in the tags of the ASN, as Vorboss and Mythic Beasts do while iDNET does not.
However they are present in LINX LON1, LINX LON2, LONAP and DE-CIX, two of which are also with the route server, so they should have a lot of peers. Depending on take up and average usage, they might need to increase the port capacities at LINX and/or LONAP later. For upstreams they use NTT, Lumen/Level 3 and Zayo for IPv4, and additionally Hurricane Electric for IPv6 of course. NTT is usually fairly good. My favourite combination currently for IPv4 is Telia and NTT, or Telia, NTT and HE for IPv6.
Good to see these faster speeds on the horizon.
Nice if you need that speed, but most game servers arent going to get you anything like that on download or patch day if ever.
As others said jitter/latency/ping is a much more significant factor in gaming than higher speeds.
Can’t speak for City Fibre but I’m with IDNET via Fibre Heroes and the latency I get on CS2 is single digits, and rare for anyone else to have lower. Extra bandwidth might not be that helpful, but they definitely have very good peering.