You’ve lined up a killer shot. You’re ready to score that winning goal. You’re seconds from reaching that last platform to finish the level. For background, see our recent coverage.
But lag kicks in again and blows the whole thing for you.
High latency usually causes lag and stuttering that plague online gamers. While some issues affecting latency are out of your hands, you can still reduce them yourself for a better experience.
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What you can control: Practical latency fixes
You have a few options for tackling latency on your network.
Plug in an Ethernet cable
Wi-Fi might be convenient, but it can cause high latency. Your Wi-Fi router may have to send signals to multiple devices simultaneously through walls and floors. Structural interference and heavy demand can hinder the router’s performance.
Switching to a wired connection gives you a dedicated link to the router with no wireless interference. Connecting your system to the router via Ethernet cable reduces latency for smoother gaming.
Set up Quality of Service (QoS)
If you share your router with multiple people, setting up QoS can cut latency. QoS lets your router decide which traffic comes first. It stops your router from being overwhelmed by heavy traffic.
With QoS enabled, your router treats your gaming data as more important than less time-sensitive traffic. Other priority traffic types include video calls and media streaming. Large downloads and device updates usually sit at the bottom.
You can configure QoS by accessing your router’s admin settings online and enabling the feature to fit your needs. Liquid Web’s ‘Latency and rage quitting’ study surveyed 1,000 PC and console players. 95% said latency had affected their play, so QoS is worth setting up.
Play online via a VPN
A VPN for online gaming can help you avoid latency problems. A VPN routes traffic through its own servers, which can sometimes avoid congested routes your ISP would otherwise use. The best gaming VPNs support fast protocols like WireGuard and mask your IP address, so attackers can’t target your home connection with a DDoS attack.
Gaming VPNs also encrypt your data on any network. You can play at home, in hotels, or anywhere else with a safer connection.
However, a VPN can’t completely beat latency. As a VPN reroutes traffic, it adds extra hops that can slightly increase latency. Encryption itself adds very little, usually under a millisecond, but the longer route can add more. The effect is usually small. And no VPN can fix a congested last mile, the stretch between your home and your ISP’s network.
Connect through a server near the game server
The further away you are from a game server, the worse the latency is likely to be. Routing your traffic to a server closer to the game server can noticeably improve your connection.
A VPN lets you choose which server your traffic passes through, so you can pick one close to the game server.
Manage other network activities
If you’re on a shared network at home, ask other members of your household to reduce their strain on the connection. Anyone streaming movies in 4K or downloading huge files will interfere with your gaming.
If they’re working on something important, other network users might be reluctant to stop what they’re doing. But reducing network usage whenever possible can help bring latency down.
What you can’t control, and how to work around it
You can only do so much to lower latency when playing online. In some cases, ISP and network issues may lead to slower, weaker performance.
ISP peering
Peering is a direct link between two networks so traffic passes straight between them instead of taking a longer paid route. Good peering can improve connection speeds and reduce latency. But poor peering may slow traffic down and make latency worse by using badly planned routes.
To get around weak peering, you can use a gaming VPN to take a different route, or switch to a mobile hotspot to leave your ISP’s network entirely.
Network congestion
Latency can be very high on overwhelmed networks. Congestion can build up in your home, at your local exchange, or further out on the wider internet.
To deal with congestion, try disconnecting non-gaming devices from your network and using different servers (if possible). You may be able to activate a low-latency mode in some games for added stability, too.
Other players’ connection strength
Fast broadband at your end doesn’t help if another player’s connection is unstable. When playing with a peer-to-peer (P2P) setup, one player’s connection can ruin the experience for everyone. Watch your in-game ping indicator and leave high-ping lobbies.
Dealing with latency at home
High latency costs you matches, but most of it is fixable.
- Switching to a wired connection is the easiest place to start.
- A VPN can make a noticeable difference.
- Set up QoS on your router to prioritise gaming traffic.
- Manage your household bandwidth.
If problems persist after trying to fix latency yourself, speak to your ISP about causes beyond your control.
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