Check you Internet Speed and Bandwidth – If you play games online, you’ll know how incredibly frustrating lagging can be. If you’re in the middle of a game, and the internet causes it to freeze, you can end up losing your game and game progress. The game you’re playing for fun can soon just turn into an annoyance.
Game lags happen when there’s a delay between the action the player takes and the reaction of the game’s server. As well as the internet connection cutting out, lags can be one of the most irritating things that a gamer can experience. It’s annoying because it won’t matter when you made your action. If you’re playing against someone with a faster game, they have a better chance of winning.
Luckily, there are several things that can be done to reduce lags and make sure you can enjoy your gaming experience.
You don’t need to have majorly high-speed internet to be able to play your game seamlessly. You do need to have at least 15-20Mbps if you’re going to use your internet for gaming, which you can get with Frontier internet. If you’re searching for a decent speed of ‘internet service near me’, don’t forget to think about your bandwidth too.
If you or other people in the house will be using the internet for other things like streaming movies, video calls, or browsing the web at the same time as you’re gaming, it can put the bandwidth under strain. Streaming and downloading files are especially big as they require a lot of data. In fact, they take up more data than gaming does. This can slow down your internet speed a lot, which then slows down your game if you don’t have enough bandwidth to support everything you’re trying to do.
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Aim For Low Latency
Network latency is how long it takes for data to travel between the source and destination. The lower the latency, the better. If you’re playing a game with high latency, you might find that when you give the game a command like walking your character forward, the character won’t actually move for a few seconds. This is what causes games to lag. The best combination is to have high-speed internet with low latency.
A good latency is a ping rate of below 150 milliseconds. 20ms is great latency.
Like bandwidth, latency will depend on more than only your broadband connection. Latency is also affected by your network hardware, the location and connection of the remote server, and the router.
When datas travels between their source and their destination, it doesn’t usually take a direct route. Instead, it will instead pass through several different points along the way. The longer the route that the data has to take, and the more stops it has to make on the way, the longer the delay will be. How far away your router is from the console or computer you’re playing on will also add to the delay.
Move Closer To Your Router
Things like your walls, floors, and furniture can get in the way of the signal from your router. You can make your WiFi signal and improve connectivity by moving your console or computer nearer to the router and making sure nothing is in the way.
If you still have issues with lag, or you can’t move the router, try a new position for your gaming. Move the console to a different angle, for example. Cut out signal interference from other appliances around the house, like wireless speakers, chargers, and microwaves. This can help your wireless signal to take a direct route to the device you’re gaming on.
Close Any Background Websites and Programs
Sites that need a lot of bandwidth to run, like Netflix or YouTube have a big impact on your ping rate and latency. Close any running in the background to improve your game’s performance.
It can also help to reduce how many devices you have connected to the same WiFi. The more devices you have connected to it, the more bandwidth is needed. You could put other devices in aeroplane mode while you’re gaming.
Connect Your Router With An Ethernet Cable
If you have to share your WiFi connection, you might not be able to ask your housemates or family not to use the internet while you’re gaming. Instead, you could connect your device to the router with an Ethernet cable. As long as your router isn’t causing the problem, this should dramatically lower your ping.
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