Ping times

[#1]

Hello !
This may or may not be the correct place to post; as its not so much a problem I have but something I am looking to improve if possible.
Happy with all things download related, 8128/448 syncs and maxed out profile and downloads fly at 800k+ without an issue.
Pingtimes are marginal; I mean as a keen fps player majority of servers I play on will be hosted in London and the pingtimes do vary substantially based on the time and the fluctuations are very noticeable. As I have interleaving off on a good day pings will be 15-25ms (From Scotland; which is usually a little higher then those from England obviously). I'm happy with anything under 25ms.
C:\Documents and Settings\karm>ping bbc.co.uk -t
Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=120
Ping statistics for 212.58.224.138:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 23ms
Control-C
^C
C:\Documents and Settings\karm>
==============================================================
So this looks great; so whats my problem? Well this is very time dependant, on peak pingtimes can be between 40 and 50 which is a substantial difference and its extremely noticeable when you go from playing with 20ms to 50ms. I'm not complaining; im just curious as to why it does this? Peak load, gaming traffic not prioritised correctly?
Im on BBYW Opt3 which is 30gb usage/m for £20 or so -> would the Plusnet Pro (15gb usage for same price) which advertises "Low latency and pings" actually give me a significantly lower ping or just keep it consistent during peak times possibly? I very much doubt its possible to get under 20ms from Scotland consistently regardless of hardware surely?
Anybody know a little more about the situation or has moved from BBYW to PN Pro and seen a significant improvement in service?

[#2]

If you're playing well known games it shouldn't be an issue with your broadband product, as it should prioritise any games that it recognises in order for them to experience low latency. So I wonder if perhaps the problem is exchange/BT network congestion. If it is, there's a possibility that paying for MaxDSL Premium might improve things for you - I think it has a cost of about £8/month. As well as giving you faster upload speeds, it gives you a higher priority over the BT wholesale network (i.e. the equipment between Plusnet and your telephone line), the idea being that at peak times you get a bigger slice of the pie in terms of capacity (and therefore download speed). What I don't know, though, is if that also helps with latency, although logic would suggest that it might.

[#3]

run wireshark why you are playing game to see if its traffic is indeed being picked up ok. all outgoing packets will be marked as 0x00 as they havent been over the PN network so only look at incoming packets http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/troubleshooting/wireshark.shtml
http://www.wireshark.org/
Traffic Queue Hex Value Example 
Titanium 0xa0  Gaming and VOIP 
Gold  0x80 or 0x60 Interactive traffic 
Silver  0x40  Unclassified traffic 
Bronze  0x20 or 0x00  Non-interactive traffic
plusnet pro only advantage over the other products regarding ping times is that if a game has not yet bein added to the traffic mangment database pro will at its worse be in the 0x80(gold) queue which is line speed and has no packet drops when things are running normal on the network.
where the other products the traffic could be as low as p2p which would make the game unplayable till it had a sig made for it
you can also try gateway hoping in the peak time to see if you get more stable pings on diffrent gateways.
to see which gateway your on http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway or just look at hop 2 on tracerts
and to see which is the most likely gateway to be performing best check the packet drop graphs http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broadband_packets_drop.shtml
when i added max prem to maxdsl i did see a drop of 1ms on my pings to bbc.co.uk whether that was the norm or just a rare case i dont know

[#4]

Pings from a command line will always be prioritised correctly so if the 50ms pings are coming from a command line then the problem's likely to be elsewhere. BTW, our DSL edge routers (gateways) are all based in London so you should get pretty decent ping times to gaming servers hosted down there.