How To Lower Ping: The Gamer's Secret Weapon
The gaming industry is booming. Gaming has taken over all other mediums of entertainment and now has the largest market share in the entertainment industry. The growing E-Sports scene is one of the major factors that made gaming so popular.
People are competitive in nature. The gaming industry quenches this thirst for a competitive environment with highly competitive games and large-scale E-Sports events.
Gaming has its fair share of problems that competitive gamers regularly have to face. One of the major problems faced by competitive gamers is how to increase FPS and how to lower ping. Here we will discuss the latter.
What is Ping
In technical terms, ping is a measure of latency. In other words, it is the measure of the time it takes for a signal to go from your computer to the server and then back to your computer. Ping is not a term used by "regular people" who have no interest in gaming, or offline gamers who don't play games online. It is because ping only affects online gamers, especially competitive gamers.
Ping and Competitive Gamers
Ping is a term that needs no introduction to competitive gamers. Ping is notorious for making tons of competitive gamers, or online gamers in general, frustrated by making a game unenjoyable, or in some cases, unplayable. This is why a large industry of ping-lowering hardware and software exists. Gamers invest lots of money in such hardware and software to get the best experience possible.
Causes of High Ping
The ping that you will get while playing a particular game depends on many factors. The one thing that will have the largest effect on your ping is the distance between your computer and the server on which you are playing the game. Ping will get higher as the distance from the server to your computer increases because there is a limit to how fast the signal/packet has to travel.
Several other factors related to both hardware and software affect ping and cause it to increase. For instance, an old and dusty Wi-Fi router will most likely increase ping. Other sources of high ping include the number of devices connected to a single network, background updates, faulty software, faulty hardware, and fault in the network cables.
Ping is not a problem when it stays below 100ms. The ideal ping for a competitive gamer would be around 50ms. The problems start occurring when the ping becomes too high. High ping causes issues like lag and jittering.
Effects of High and Unplayable Ping
If you are a competitive gamer, you know how frustrating high ping is. Gamers invest tons of time and money to lower their ping because high ping either lowers their in-game performance or causes in-game effects that make the game unplayable.
Firstly high ping causes lag. Let's say you decide to hold an angle in Rainbow Six Siege. You are aiming down the sights and looking at the corner. You get shot without even seeing an enemy. The thing is, there was an enemy around that corner and, he peeked at you and fired at you but, that information if the enemy peeking did not reach your computer in time for you to react. This is lag and it happened because of high ping. In this way, high ping makes you lose more gunfights and may even cause a broken keyboard.
Several other high ping related problems include jittering, rubberbanding, teleporting, stuttering, and in severe cases, disconnection from the game.
How to Lower Ping
Here are some of the fixes that you can do to lower your ping:
Disable Background Apps and Updates
Applications and software that you are not using might be running in the background while you are playing an online game. These applications can sometimes start to update automatically. Windows also sometimes like to initiate an update download regardless of the fact that you are in a clutch situation. These updates and background applications can cause unnecessary load on the bandwidth of your internet connection which in turn causes high ping. To avoid this, you must disable all automatic updates of windows and close all unnecessary applications. You may need to use the task manager to close some applications. Discord and TeamSpeak are fine to use.
Switch to a Wired Connection
A wired connection is always superior to a wireless connection because an optical fiber cable is an uninterrupted medium of data transport, while a wireless connection can have several obstacles. Hence we recommend that you switch to a wired connection from wireless. If you can’t get a wired connection we suggest investing in a gaming router. Applying any of these two fixes will improve the quality of your connection and lower the ping.
Lower the Traffic
Just like useless background applications that put unnecessary load on your bandwidth, a lot of users on a single connection may cause high ping too. If you can, we suggest getting a separate internet connection or at least limit the devices connected to the internet connection you are using for gaming. Upgrading to a high bandwidth internet connection or change your ISP may also help lower ping.
Play on Servers Closest to You
As discussed above, the distance from your computer to the game server greatly affects your ping, hence if you want the lowest ping possible you must connect to the closest game server possible. Most games these days allow you to select regions on which you want to play. The game servers are located in these regions. Games also show the exact ping that you will get after connecting to a specific region. For games that don't show ping next to the region, you can simply select a region that is closest to you, and this will most likely get you the lowest ping possible.
WTFast
To get the lowest possible ping, you can try using WTFast, a Gamer's Private Network, or GPN. WTFast not only lowers your ping but also stabilizes it to avoid any ping spikes. It does this by connecting your network to a different connection that is more stable. With WTFast, you can lower your ping with just one click, as it is designed for gamers and has built-in instructions to switch to a connection with the lowest possible ping. Try WTFast today for a smooth gaming experience.
