Why fiber is the best type of internet for gaming

Competitive gamers are always looking for any possible advantage. Even less dedicated hobbyists can still appreciate getting the smoothest possible experience. So, it makes perfect sense why people search so extensively for the best internet for gaming.

Of course, depending on your needs, budget, and location, it’s possible there are multiple good internet options for you. For example, if you mostly play offline or prefer more casual mobile games, you might not need to worry as much about your internet’s performance. Any reliable internet service should likely do the trick. If you are into serious online gaming, there are big advantages to using fiber internet. This article will focus on three major advantages:

Fiber internet provides high bandwidth, fast download speeds, and fast upload speeds

What are download speeds and upload speeds?
You’ll often see internet plans measured by download speeds and upload speeds. The download speed tells you how quickly you can move information from the internet onto your device. In this case, that’s how quickly information can travel from the gaming company’s servers to your computer or console. The upload speed tells you how quickly you can send information from your device out to other parts of the internet, including to the game’s web servers.

What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth measures the total amount of information that can travel over your home internet connection in a given period of time. Like download speeds and upload speeds, bandwidth is often measured in Megabits per second (Mbps).

What’s a good internet speed for gaming?
For more serious gamers who live in a household with multiple other heavy internet users, you should consider a plan with a maximum download speed of 300Mbps or more. This might sound like a lot, but if you tend to connect many devices to your internet, you might want an even faster plan to keep your gaming experience running smoothly while supporting all your devices. That is because your internet isn’t just supporting your game—it’s splitting its bandwidth between every device on the network, whether  for other gamers playing in the household, your phone, or even your smart home devices.

Take a closer look at how much speed you need

How is fiber internet faster for gaming?
Fiber internet has the potential to deliver much faster speeds than other forms of internet, such as cable and DSL. It also provides symmetrical download and upload speeds. Other forms of internet, even when they offer relatively high speeds, tend to offer much lower upload speeds than download speeds.

For one example, AT&T Fiber® plans can deliver both download and upload speeds as high as 5Gbps.*

Not sure if you’re getting the speed you should be? Test your internet speed

Fiber internet offers low latency for gaming

What is latency?
Latency, or what some gamers call ping, is the time it takes for a packet or piece of information to travel from your computer to the game company’s server, and back again. High latency is a big part of what causes those annoying delays that gamers often call “lag”.

How fiber internet can provide lower latency for gaming

One of the biggest factors in latency is your physical distance from the server, which is often mostly beyond your control. However, the one factor you can control, is the material that your information travels across. While latency is quite complicated, internet delivered over a fiber optic cable tends to provide lower latency, on average, than internet provided over copper wires cables, or other materials. This is important because it means that by choosing fiber internet, you can help get rid of issues such as lag.

Fiber internet provides higher reliability for gaming

As nice as it is to have fast speeds and low latency, there are few things more important to gamers than reliability.

Some types of internet service will sometimes slow down when many people are using the service at the same time. This is because several people in the neighborhood may be connected over the same line, so there’s a good chance your internet will provide lower bandwidth at peak usage times—when you’re most likely to be gaming.