@baked - Hi, my name's Weyland - I'm the amateur who owns and operates the Cortana Bigass Final servers. They are ranked in the top two or three Bigass servers in the world by Gametracker
https://www.gametracker.com/search/halo/?query=bigass
Just wanted to respond with some info you might find helpful.
First off, Google Fiber connects your home to your local DSLAM exchange.
There isn't necessarily any Google Fiber connection from your local DSLAM exchange to wherever a game server might be located, and therefore having Google Fiber at home doesn't necessarily have any impact at all on your ping when connecting to servers situated large distances from you.
Atomical's servers are based in Dallas, Texas.
My servers are based in Los Angeles.
You yourself obviously get better ping from Dallas, Texas which suggests you live on the East Coast.
I get about 60ms better ping from my server's than Atomical's.
You've declared "most people's pings there are over 120ms".
Not sure what methodology you've used to come so that conclusion, but I have access to the hosting tools that show me the average ping logged since December last year.
And prior to making them public, I tested moving the server to many different locations all over the world before
the actual data clearly showed that Los Angeles provides the best option for an international player base.
Atomical corroborates this in a post on his HaloMD Discord...
And here are the results of pinging Atomical's BIgass Christian vs my CORTANA Bigass Final MD/PC server from multiple locations
Atomical
CORTANA
On the issue of "framing", using CTRL + F12 on Halo PC Retail brings up a frame rate counter and graph. Atomical's server and my server both log a consistent 30 FPS.
Couple of other factors to consider.
Atomical's servers are Linux based, where as mine are Windows based.
My servers run on superior hardware to that offered by Linode, Atomical's hosting company.
Now as you rightly point out, I am only an amateur (is there such a thing as professional Halo Combat Evolved server hosts?), but I thought you might find this info helpful.