With the rapid rollout of full fibre networks across the UK, network engineers must recalibrate their baseline expectations. Legacy FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) environments generally operated with a 10-15ms baseline ping to major UK data centres due to VDSL2 interleaving and copper impedance. FTTP Architectural Differences In an FTTP GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) architecture, there is no active switching equipment between the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) inside the premises and the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) at the exchange. According to Openreach technical specifications, this passive light-splitting drastically reduces physical latency. The New Baseline When diagnosing FTTP circuits directly via ethernet from the ONT (bypassing the router entirely to isolate the circuit): Expected ICMP to 1.1.1.1 (London): 2ms - 4ms Expected Jitter: < 0.5ms Packet Loss: 0% If an FTTP connection is operating above 8ms locally, the issue is almost always a poorly configured ISP routing table or internal home network congestion (which I discussed in my recent guide on Diagnosing Bufferbloat). By strictly mapping these baselines, systems engineers can instantly identify whether a fault lies on the passive optical network or inside the customer's Local Area Network.