Lower Ping: The Easiest Fixes To Reduce Your Ping
Ping is one of the worst issues when gaming with friends. You’re playing League of Legends or Minecraft, and everything is going smoothly when suddenly ping rears its ugly head.
You may revert position in the game, losing valuable seconds of progress. You may miss shots when you were aimed perfectly at your opponent. You may get hit yourself when you should have been perfectly protected.
All these online gaming problems stem from one malignant source: ping. Thankfully, for all the difficult problems ping and lag present, there are countless easy solutions. WTFast is here to highlight the best ways to solve ping problems today.
Why Does Ping Exist
Before we get into solutions, one unfortunate concession has to be made: There is no way to eliminate ping completely. Ping is a natural result of the less-than-instantaneous art of data transmission.
Every piece of data needs to be transmitted, whether from PC to server or server to PC. Ping means the length of time it takes the former, and the length of time it takes for the signal to reach its destination and return is latency. No matter what advances are made in the world of fiber optics, our data can’t travel at the speed of light. The overwhelming majority of cables in common use operate at roughly two-thirds of this metric.
Because data travels quickly, ping speed is measured in milliseconds. Even a difference of ten milliseconds (ms) can be felt when playing high-speed games. Bad ping time exceeds 100ms, the best ping stays within 20ms, and average ping resides between these two benchmarks.
There will always be a small delay from the game server, but high ping can make games feel unplayable due to lag issues. It can seem impossible to play against opponents when a game seems unresponsive to your controls.
Arguably worse than simply having bad ping are ping spikes. Ping spikes happen when your ping skyrockets for a moment or two, seemingly out of nowhere. Whereas ping is based on connection speed, ping spikes are affected by your connections' stability.
Playing with bad ping at least provides a consistent experience. Ping spikes periodically force you to adjust as your connection flatlines.
Thankfully, this guide will handle each issue by improving both connection speed and quality, so you can get back to playing.
Fixing Ping From Your Computer
You can try this first set of solutions for bad ping with your mouse, keyboard, and a little bit of ingenuity. Every application you run places a bit of strain on your computer’s functionality. Some of these are obvious, like streaming services and internet browsers. Other applications tend to run in the background without any outright usage on your part.
This can include updates for games, among other things. Nothing slows down your PC like countless background applications running alongside the data demands of your game. To solve this issue, go to your Task Manager through the search bar in the bottom right.
You should see a list of applications, separated into foreground and background functionalities, as well as system demands. Background programs and downloads can seriously affect your gameplay, whether through lag or stuttering graphics.
Even if you like watching Netflix while you game, it can be the difference between a big W and an avoidable loss. Manually close each task that appears to be demanding significant resources (including caches), and voila: immediate ping improvement.
Simply restarting or shutting down your computer or gaming device can help, too. This is often necessary for system updates to fully take place and helps to clear system memory. This latter can be essential if particular applications behave in a way that they shouldn’t.
Fixing Ping With Your Internet Service Provider
No discussion of ping would be complete without mentioning your internet service provider (ISP). Alongside external services, your internet bandwidth defines how much data your devices can send at once. A high internet speed is essential if you are in a household with multiple people on a large number of devices — especially multiple online gamers.
The Federal Communications Commission recommends a speed of 3 to 4 Mbps for gaming. This number fails to account for phones, consoles, and countless other devices that hook up to your internet. Based on household size, at least 25Mbps is a better start for gaming.
Your choice of internet provider does solve some issues, but not all of them. Most providers inherently focus on general internet usage and not gaming-specific usage. This means the way data is shunted along is focused on cost-efficiency instead of immediacy.
Data is rarely transmitted directly from your computer to the server and back using the most convenient route. Traceroute programs track the exact route your data takes across various devices to end up at the server. While these can help, they lack the authority to change the route of your data in a meaningful way. This sort of evolution requires other pieces of software to make a reality.
Your internet provider is a core component in getting your ping levels to acceptable metrics. However, this does not mean a faster internet connection will leave you with an optimized connection.
Fixing Ping From Your Router
Your router is the immediate connection from your PC to the internet at large. This makes it the easiest piece of your online presence to alter personally.
The simplest way to tackle ping from your router is to unplug it and let it rest for ten seconds. When you turn it back on, it may slightly improve your ping.
Your router only has the bandwidth to transmit so much data at one time, regardless of your internet speed. Overloading can lead to bottlenecked data and significantly worse ping. This is especially recognizable the more devices you have connected to a single router.
Your router and internet speed are both tightly related. Your router can only transmit so much data at one time. Your internet speed only allows for a certain amount of data transmission per second. Reaching max capacity in either results in misallocated resources.
The most essential action you can take regarding your router connection is to use an ethernet cable connection. A wireless connection may be convenient, but they are also slower and less consistent than a wired connection. These downfalls increase your ping and leave you open to unpredictable ping spikes.
WTFast is currently beta-testing gaming routers designed in tandem with ASUS to improve gamers' online experiences. These routers are designed to connect a single device to our personal Gamers Private Network. This helps solve the issue of both high internet traffic and shared devices on a given router. The result is lowered latency, lessened data packet loss, and an overall enhanced gaming experience.
Fixing Ping With Software
The above issues can help you solve ping piecemeal but may result in wasted time. Your improvements may not be as substantial or lasting as you would like.
For a comprehensive solution to ping, WTFast has put together a PC client built to optimize your overall performance. A mobile version is also presently being developed to support gaming on the go.
The client uses detailed analytics to reduce ping, latency, and other parameters in real-time. You can also examine these analytics yourself to identify how things are progressing on your end. The “how” of what WTFast does to improve gaming experiences is even more remarkable than this.
WTFast uses traceroute functionality to track and manage your data every step of the way. This close examination leads to reduced packet loss and allows us to optimize the route your data takes. This is possible thanks to our Gamers Private Network, which allows private connections without ever masking your IP address — unlike a VPN, which could get flagged as a bot or hacker in your favorite multiplayer games.
Your data isn’t the only data being transferred on the internet. This level of traffic can cause slower connections, especially during peak internet usage times. FFXIV encountered this issue server-side when Endwalker was released last year, requiring the devs to shut out new players temporarily.
Our GPN acts as a private highway without the traffic constraints of regular pathways. Your data travels unobstructed, leading directly to lower ping and latency. We also prioritize resources towards the game at hand, performing many background tasks which individually improve performance.
Our route optimizer works because it tackles countless issues, including ones players normally can’t access. With new games added for support regularly, WTFast will only grow better as time goes on.
Fixing Your Ping, Once and for All
If you're gaming on a PC instead of a Playstation 4 (PS4) or another console, countless individual solutions exist to fix ping — but none are as comprehensive as our route optimizer.
It takes the best of PC and router maintenance while providing services that few could possibly achieve independently. This can bring horrendous ping to acceptable levels or turn already good ping into a professional-quality server connection.
Fixing ping is just the start. The next step is to assemble your team in your favorite games and play with newfound confidence.
Sources:
Towards high-capacity fibre-optic communications at the speed of light in vacuum | Nature Photonics
What Is Traceroute And What Do You Use It For? I Make Use Of
You Think That New Router Will Make Your Wi-Fi Super Fast? Not So Fast Buddy! I CNET
