Gaming latency – ping – lag – (different names, same menace) is the time taken for your device to send/receive information from a gaming server. The shorter the distance, the lower the gaming latency, giving you a smooth gaming experience.
That being said, I know very well how high latency rates can affect your gaming. For me, it just kills the mood. You come home pissed from work and just want to relax by grinding on COD or CS, and then constant high lag just makes you question your life decisions!
Like me, you look up ‘internet provider near me’ on Google to explore options, and turns out, that almost every other gamer has posted about facing latency issues with every internet provider. So, does that mean the internet providers are the ones messing up the gaming latency? I don’t think that’s entirely true.
What Causes High Gaming Latency?
Here’s what I was able to grasp from my experience when I decided to look into my network and let my provider off the hook for once for bad internet:
- Low-speed internet (well, that’s obvious)
- Choked speed (someone’s spamming download)
- Too many devices (your neighbors are probably on to it)
- Bad server (you poor soul)
I figured out these issues when I ran speed tests on different servers for pretty much the same results.
How Does Latency Affect Gaming?
We know that gaming latency ruins the entire experience, period. There are no do-overs with lags and trust me, once there’s lag, your game’s screwed.
· Lag Disrupts Data Flow
Since it’s basically disrupting the communication between your device and the gaming server, high latency can disturb the flow of data or lead to ‘Ping Desync’, a familiar term in this matter. Whenever I’m playing any game, particularly Warzone, I often face this issue and it’s just so damn frustrating.
And as you know, it results in inconsistent data flow, ruining the game, resulting in penalties, causing profiles to disconnect, and all the hell that gets loose with it.
· Delayed Moves
If you’re lucky (which I’m not, btw), you can still remain connected to the game. But I’d say it’s far worse! You actually put up quite an effort in clutching perhaps one of the best shots of your career only to realize that you were dead long ago!
This again relates to inconsistent data flow, delaying your game’s actions. You think you’ve passed a certain point only to figure out that you didn’t even get out of the base!
· Poor Visibility
Apart from our obvious ability to spot the enemy (which happens to me a lot and I still wonder why I don’t have a stream audience), high lag causes poor game visibility.
When you can’t see the gameplay, you’re not able to get things done. Well, at least you can blame the lag like me and easily skip the fact that you’re just a dud when it comes to spotting enemies.
How to Fix Lag 101
Now then, the moment ya’ll been waiting for! Here are my tried and tested methods that made my internet better and reduced lag significantly during gaming!
· Reduce Connected Devices
My first thought was ‘Who else is using my internet besides me?’ and it was like my Peter tingle telling me that it wasn’t just my PC. Turns out it was because apart from my family hogging the internet for TikTok, I had several smart devices connected to it.
I previously had the internet for myself since I paid for it, but my generous self let my family use it too. So I turned into Itachi mode, disconnected all the devices from my network by changing the Wi-Fi password, and Voila! The lag was fairly reduced!
· Close Background Tasks
Ya’ll already imagine how it turned out when I disconnected others from the network (I was almost banished from the house). But turns out, even after disconnecting them, I saw a spike in the network usage via task manager.
So, I also work freelance and just keep the work programs running when I take a break, and that’s a mistake. Those tasks have been sucking the life out of my internet and not in a good manner. What I did was check which task was consuming the most network, including browser tabs, and then disable them or close them altogether.
The spike came down a bite every time I disabled/ closed a task and I did feel that the in-game internet experience was improved. It wasn’t as smooth as I wanted but definitely better.
· Switch to Wired Connection
I usually prefer going wireless for almost all of my gadgets (I’m sorry for being a slacker) but that’s just me. I like the convenience of just moving the keyboard or the mouse or the laptop anywhere without dragging wires with me.
But what I observed was having good speed when I had the Ethernet cable connected to my laptop. It was phenomenal, almost as if I had the second-highest speed, behind NASA. I’ve heard that Wi-Fi gets disrupted due to signal interference but this was mind-blowing.
· Change Gaming Server
This was not something I wanted because the servers with the least ping had the worst lobbies and probably every gamer can relate thatsome serverslike SEA are just bad news. But I do make this choice sometimes and switch the server.
I get the ping down but the lobbies are still way too toxic for me.
· Upgrade Internet Speed and Bandwidth
This iss something I did as a last resort but it was the final nail in the coffin. Since I didn’t want to change the server, I needed more internet speed and bandwidth to accommodate the gameplay. For that, I simply contacted my internet provider, upgraded the plan, added more MBs to the speed, and that’s that!
I ran the game after closing unnecessary tasks, reduced connected devices, and used a wired connection, and it was as if I didn’t have lag anymore! At least now I could blame my build in the game instead of lag for my noob gameplay but that’s another story.
So, if you’re like me having lags during gaming, then do the above and you’ll definitely feel the difference. To give you something extra, try clearing your browser cache, and get a router with QoS for improved performance and reduced gaming latency.