Improving Bandwidth with Speed AND Latency

The need for speed. Tom Cruise had it in Top Gun and the need for broadband speed (download and upload speeds) has been a big part of the success of FairlawnGig and our ever-growing subscriber base.

But just as important as speed for rock-solid Internet service is latency. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, latency is a measurement of how quickly data travels from one point to another. And for many, including gamers and high-end application users, latency is perhaps just as important as the multi-gigabit speeds provided by FairlawnGig.

Unlike speed where more is better, we want latency to be low. Latency is impacted by packet size, geographical distance, the number of connection points, and competing traffic. Minimizing these lowers latency. Latency, of course, is also enhanced and lowered with a fiber optic connection straight to your home or business.

Historically, our low latency starts with having strong partner relationships (approximately thirty currently) to help us reach the rest of the world and connect to different networks. These partners are known in the broadband world as “peers” and range from Internet transit providers to content producers and large local businesses and government entities. FairlawnGig is continuously and aggressively seeking new peers and direct connections that will reduce the network’s latency. What does all this mean?  One example of a FairlawnGig peer is Fastly who host the New York Times, Vimeo, iHeartMedia, and many more. Another of our peers, Cloudfare, brings us direct connections to mozilla, shopify, etc. Our peer relationships reduces the workload on transit providers and gets you these sites directly.

Locally, and during a pandemic, we have been focusing on connecting home users directly to their local place of work to lower latency levels. The 2020-staples of remote work and remote learning also need low latency so the Zoom calls operate smoothly.

On the business side, companies require low latencies for real-time replication of data systems for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Each and every application and Internet session benefits from low latency, but recently PCMag.com recognized our low latency as it is a big factor in recognizing its Best Gaming ISPs for 2021. They describe a good “gaming ISP” as one who offers a “low-latency, high-quality connection… that ensures your button mashes register without lag.”

FairlawnGig is in the top five in terms of the site’s “Gaming Quality Index” which was measured over 2020. We’ve since lowered our latency levels significantly through a variety of efforts (click to see details), so we’re looking forward to climbing even higher on these charts!