The speed you are sold by Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, ect is "Circuit Speed" this is only what your circuit is provisioned at.
This type of internet is what is known as "Best Effort" intenet. There is 0 gaurentee that you will have this bandwidth available.
Fios, Comcast 2Gig, ect is included in this "Best Effort" class.
Fios for example is 1 Fiber from the Central Office to the nehiborhood that can be split off into 32 individual fibers for the homes.
The main fiber has a capicity of 2gbs download and 1 gbps upload. So if all the people are using thier service at the same time,
and 32 people are attached to that fiber you will not get your paid for speed hence the name "Best Effot"
Comcast is HFC Hybrid Fiber Coax, in which a fiber is run to the node on the telephone pole in which it is converted to Coax and delivered to
X amount of homes. The same can happen in this scenerio, the node only has so much bandwidth over the fiber and typically is oversold
banking on the fact everyone wont use thier service at the same time.
Speedtest results are irrelevent for the following reasons.
Each ISP is thier own network, they connect to other ISP's at large centers called internet exchanges, or peering points.
For example, if
@Sharks_Breath is on Comcast in Detroit, and his buddy is on ATT in detroit, theoretically he should have an amazing connection right ? Wrong.
Comcast peers with the rest of the world for detroit in Chicago, so best case scenerio is that ATT also peers in Chicago as well. So to play that person, the route
has to go from Detroit to Chicago back to Detroit. If ATT doesnt peer in Chicago the route may take many many bounces and a player in the same city as you may have 5-60ms ping because of poor peering.
A lot of ISPS have terrible peering and just because you are geographically located near somone doesnt mean that the connection peers in a reasonable mannor, You may be sent across the country before you get to the other person. All depends on routing and peering.
Also a lot of ISPs, and this is in the news constantly have terrible peering arraingements with other providers, just because you have a 500mb connection from your house to the central office, doesnt mean if you are trying to download content from a certain network, Google, Amazon AWS, Youtube ect that you also will have 500mbps because the "Peering" between Verizon and Youtube may be either saturated or purposefully throttled.
I have a 500mbps connection and Netflix still buffers sometimes ect.
Also many people experience a 1 sided delay with UMK3, a major source of that is as follows.
Lets take 2 players 1 in NYC 1 in Chicago, The route the person in NYC may be very direct, minimal amt of hops, like NYC to Chicago direct, however
the person in chicago's route to NYC may take crazy bounces Chicago, Texas, Nashville VA then to NYC.
Naturally the player in Chicago will see the moves of the player in NYC faster than the player in NYC seing the Chicago players moves, You have a 50ms ping however
you may have 20ms of that from you to the other person and because of bad routing they may have a 30ms return path.
Unless you are playing on the SAME ISP as the other player the connection has a EXTREMELY small chance of having the same inbound and outbound routing.
A speed test is only a gauge of your Circuit speed and has 0 to do with how you will peer with another player.
There is NO universal "Speed Test" ect to determine how you will connect with another player believe me.
Add in DSL, People with Docsis Cable living in APT buildings with terrible uncontrolably inside wiring, WIFI, oversaturated nodes, oversold fiber ect and you can see how internet gaming will NEVER and i repeat NEVER work.
