Lowering your ping

Check out these tips to reduce ping times, reduce latency, and improve your online gameplay if you experience lag when playing games online

If you're experiencing lag while playing online games - where other players appear, disappear, and jump around - your ping could be too high. Ping measures the speed of your connection, or more specifically, the latency of the connection.

This section will explain ping in greater detail, including how to measure it and how to reduce ping to reduce lag in online games.

What is ping?

Some people believe a fast, responsive internet connection depends solely on good download and upload speeds, but there is more to it than that. Additionally, there is ping, which is essentially a reaction time. A ping of 98ms (milliseconds) indicates the time it took for your computer (or game console) to respond to a request from another computer.

You want a ping time as low as possible. Online games usually display your ping time along with the ping of other players or servers. Due to the delay, you will almost certainly have difficulty playing the game if your ping is around 150 (or more).

When timing is crucial, a long ping time can be very noticeable. Ping does not just affect games. That's why a low ping is so important, especially in games where your position and response time are so critical (think first-person shooters or racing games). 

Ping speed measurement

Speedtest.net, the most popular online speed test, lets you check the latency of your internet connection (fun fact: Speedtest was featured in an Iron Man movie). A ping of less than 20ms is considered excellent, but pings over 150ms will result in noticeable lag.

With a slow ping, you will take a lot longer to perform actions than your online peers, which will put you at a disadvantage.

How to reduce ping

It is a trial-and-error process to find the best way to reduce your ping; there is no single solution. In the first place, and the simplest, you should close all other programs and windows on your computer, making sure there are no active downloads running in the background that might be affecting the ping. 

You may also have trouble if someone in your house runs a bandwidth-intensive service, such as streaming Netflix in 4K or downloading large files. As you connect and use more devices, your ping will increase.

If you're still experiencing high pings, try moving your device closer to your router, or better yet, connect your computer or console directly to your router by using an Ethernet cable, such as the cheap Ugreen CAT7 Ethernet cable.

If moving your PC or console near the router isn't feasible, then a powerline adapter will essentially bring that direct connection to you via the powerlines in your home. TP-Link's AV1000 offers a good balance between value and performance. You will not experience any issues with Wi-Fi or poor signal strength, which may affect your internet connection latency.

Also, you can try a mesh Wi-Fi network, although it's unlikely to give you the same speed boost as a powerline adapter since it keeps you on Wi-Fi.

It's also worth checking the wires between your router and the wall box, making sure they're all plugged in fully - we've had a few problems with cable connections becoming loose over time, and tightening them has fixed the problem.

In case that doesn't work, you can try the oldest trick in the book: turn your router off and on again. Unplug the power cable from your router and wait about a minute before plugging it back in. Make sure you turn off both the router and modem if you have a separate router and modem setup.

The next step would be to purchase a new router. Your internet connection may not be making the most of its potential if you're just using the default one provided by your ISP. A better router (especially a gaming router like the Netgear Nighthawk AX4) might improve your connection speeds and your Wi-Fi coverage.

After following all the above steps, if you still have bad ping, you should contact your internet service provider. Usually, your ISP will be able to detect and fix any potential problems remotely, resulting in faster speeds - but if there are no problems with your connection, maybe it's time to switch providers. Or, y'know, just move.