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Low lag and high speeds make for the greatest gaming experience. Imagine going online after a long day of school or work only to find that the internet is slower than sludge. All the progress your video game character makes is suddenly pushed back to a previous location as if they never moved at all. The options may seem like this: Try to continue playing frustrated or stop playing. Thankfully there is a different option.  

Fiber internet is known for its high bandwidth, low latency, low ping and symmetrical download and upload speeds. All of those together create a setting for seamless gameplay.

Fiber Provides High Bandwidth  

Fiber’s high bandwidth has more capacity. There’s a water hose analogy that Midco sales team member (and lifelong gamer) Cody Waugh uses to explain its efficiency to customers. With fiber, internet turns from a trickle through the hose to a constant flow. It moves greater amounts of information at quicker speeds.  

“How much information we can transfer through the network depends on the bandwidth, like a pipe,” Waugh says. “With fiber we have a way bigger pipe.”

A wired connection is more direct and better to keep your game going smoothly. With fiber in the ground, whether it is to your curb or directly to your house, the fiber carries the signal straight there. Wireless connections get interrupted much easier, especially when a wireless connection is what most devices and products are developed for these days. Even without using them, they are constantly connected and running data, adding to traffic that could interfere with video games. 

“If your internet isn’t fast enough you can't communicate to the people that you're trying to play with,” Waugh said. “Then the servers that need to communicate with each other have a tougher time connecting because there's not enough bandwidth.”

Fiber Provides Low Ping, Low Latency

That is not a worry when fiber is involved. It has very low latency and ping, so servers can communicate from the house to the game server to a friend’s house and back in milliseconds.  

“If I'm playing on my computer, it has to go to Minneapolis to talk to Steam servers, and then from Steam to Rockstar servers which could be in Chicago. With fiber, it's probably going to take one or two milliseconds, if that,” Waugh says of his experience.

Fiber Provides Symmetrical Speeds

Slow downloads and uploads also slow games. Fiber makes it so the speed of your downloads is the same speed as your uploads.  

Some single-player games have one large initial download and not many updates that happen after. Those are the ones with non-player characters or NPCs who do usually only do a couple of the same actions. Other ones, like online games, could be updating once a week and have a consistently large flow of data going through with many people across the world playing together. You want to get any updates and downloads done as fast as possible, so you can get right to playing the game.  

“If you're wanting to play anything competitive, so League of Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, those type of games where you're playing against other, fiber is huge,” Waugh says. “You don't want to sit there for four hours to say, ‘Hey guys, I got off work, but it's going to take me until midnight to get this done. I guess I'll play tomorrow night.’ You're just constantly a week behind everybody.”  

Fiber gets the downloads done quickly so gaming can continue as if it never stopped. It also comes in clutch for content creation. Instead of taking hours to upload videos to the internet for Twitch or YouTube, it could go just as fast as those weekly downloads you hardly even notice.  

With the wider bandwidth and low latency and ping, fiber can do large downloads and uploads quickly even when everyone else is streaming. Say goodbye to buffering and hello to fast, steady gaming right at your fingertips.

 

Midco Fiber Internet not available in all service areas. Visit Midco.com/Shop to check serviceability.