How to reduce ping: Top 14 ways to lower lag and improve gaming performance

What is ping?

Ping is a network tool that measures latency in communications. It is defined as the time it takes for a signal to reach its destination and return to the source. In online gaming, this translates to the delay between performing an action (pressing the button to execute a move) and receiving a response from the game server (seeing the effect register on screen).

Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms), with lower ping values being better. So the lower the ping value, the less lag you’ll experience. Conversely, higher ping values have the potential to completely tank your gaming performance. Playing with high ping (typically in excess of 200ms) causes noticeable lag and puts you at a disadvantage. By contrast, having good ping (50ms or lower) allows for precise, responsive play.

What’s the difference between ping, latency, and lag, and why does it matter for gaming?

Ask gamers about ping, latency, and lag, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear the terms used as if they’re one and the same. But they’re not exact synonyms. Latency is the broad term for the time delay between a command you send and the network’s response to it, while ping is a network tool that tests the delay by measuring the round-trip time (RTT) it takes for data to travel from your device to a network server and back. Lag is the delay you see on screen or feel at the controller or keyboard.

Now, high ping can cause lag, but so can frame rate drops, network congestion, and an overloaded router, so not every form of lag points back to your ping. So keep that in mind. 

The easiest way to start narrowing down what’s causing your lag is to run a ping test. If the test puts your ping in the hundreds of milliseconds, network latency is likely at the root of the problem. If it shows low ping values and you’re still experiencing lag, then the issue is more likely to lie with your hardware or game settings.

What is the best ping for gaming?

There’s no single ping value that works for every game, since the responsiveness a game demands depends heavily on what game you’re playing. A round-based shooter that rewards split-second reactions has far less tolerance for delay than, say, a turn-based strategy game or an MMORPG, where a few extra milliseconds rarely affect the outcome. The table below gives you a general idea of how different ping ranges may feel in-game, though the experience can change depending on the game’s genre and how it’s built.

Your internet speed is worth looking at too, particularly if it falls short of the recommended internet speed for gaming. Raw speed doesn’t directly determine ping, but with limited bandwidth, your game may have to compete with other traffic on the network, which can send latency climbing.

How to test your current ping

To test your current ping, you’ve got a couple of options, and none of them require much more than a few minutes of your time.

Using your device’s command line tool

Testing your ping through Command Prompt on Windows or Terminal on macOS and Linux gives you the most direct reading because it lets you ping an IP address directly. 

1. 1.Find the IP address of the game server you want to test (It is usually listed in the game’s network settings).
2. 2.Open Command Prompt on Windows, or Terminal on macOS and Linux
3. 3.In the command line, type “ping” and the server’s IP address right after it, separated by a space.
4. 4.Press “Enter.”
5. 5.Review the reported round-trip times once the test finishes running.

Through in-game ping displays

Most online games show your ping directly in the interface (typically in a corner of the screen) during matchmaking or gameplay. This number reflects your live connection to that specific server, so it changes as conditions do. Check your game’s settings menu if the display isn’t visible by default, since some titles require it to be switched on manually.

Using an online speed test tool

Online speed test tools can give you a general read on your connection, including a ping figure, and some let you choose which server to test against. However, the servers available through these tools rarely include the actual servers your game connects to, so the results you get are better treated as a rough baseline than a precise measure of your in-game ping.

Understanding the results

Ping isn’t one fixed number attached to your internet connection, which is part of what makes it tricky to troubleshoot. It changes based on which server you’re connecting to and the route your traffic takes to get there, so the methods above may return different readings. If the numbers don’t line up, the in-game display is usually the best reflection of the delay you’re actually experiencing while playing.

Why is my ping so high?

The reason you have a high ping is chiefly determined by your internet connection. For example, if you have a budget home internet plan, you’re likely to suffer from high ping. However, your internet speed (download/upload speed) isn’t the only factor that affects ping while gaming. Here are the most common reasons for having high ping values:

• Your ISP is throttling your connection. Gaming consumes a lot of bandwidth, so your internet service provider (ISP) may have put a “fair usage” clause in your contract to limit connection speeds when they detect gaming traffic. Bandwidth throttling is super frustrating because it’s not immediately obvious from a simple ping test — on paper, everything’s working as it should be, but your ping still goes into the stratosphere the moment you join a match.
• Your connection is overcrowded. Your internet service plan may sound great on paper, but that juicy 100 Mbps number will need to be shared with everyone at home, including any smart TVs or other devices that depend on 24/7 access to the internet. If Dad’s streaming baseball in 4K, your gaming experience will likely be a swing and a miss — for peak performance, you need to have both good network throughput and bandwidth.
• You’re playing during peak hours. Unless you’ve got dedicated landlines straight to your game servers, you’re playing online over public infrastructure — and that infrastructure comes under a lot of stress if everyone hits the net at the same time. Peak hours are typically 5PM to 9PM, when most people come back home and start browsing, streaming, or gaming.
• Your gaming server is located far away. The longer the distance, the longer it takes for signals to reach game servers and make the trip back. If you’re playing on a game server in another continent, you’ll have higher ping than local players.
• You’ve got resource-hungry apps in the background. Sometimes you are your own worst nemesis. If you’re listening to a live Twitch stream while downloading a ginormous DLC at the same time, you’ll be lucky to leave the starting area — nevermind having anything resembling a normal game online.
• Your equipment is getting long in the tooth. You can’t argue with thermodynamics — stuff just experiences entropy over time. Oblivion will eventually claim all, including your trusty home router and childhood gaming console. Older devices can short circuit, develop glitches, or simply lack the necessary firmware updates to interact with modern networks, leading to high ping when you play online games.
• Your Wi-Fi signal is obstructed. Wi-Fi signals can be surprisingly fragile. Walls or even large pieces of furniture between you and your Wi-Fi router can disrupt your connection, causing network jitter and leading to higher ping or packet loss. If you experience stuttering or actions not registering even when your ping seems low, you likely need to learn how to fix packet loss.

Top 14 ways to reduce ping

Your ping is not set in stone — you can try many things to lower your ping rate to a respectable level. So before writing off online gaming altogether, check how to fix high ping and (hopefully) get your latency under control.

1. Close software you’re not using

Even if you’re dishing out a premium for a really good internet connection, there’s only so much bandwidth to go around. Browser tabs, streaming apps, download managers, and system updates can each take a bite of the pie, leaving only a small nibble for your video game.

To fix high ping caused by greedy apps gobbling up your internet connection speed, you need to adopt a scorched-earth approach to your background processes. Close your browser, pause active downloads, and make sure that no updates are running in the background. As a bonus, with all these distractions gone, you’ll be able to better focus on your gaming performance.

2. Restart your device

Sometimes “turn it off and on again” really is the answer to high ping woes. Restarting your gaming device will get rid of sneaky processes that have been secretly introduced by other apps and fire up essential drivers that might be in dire need of an update.

3. Remove other devices from the network

Too many cooks in the kitchen ruin the broth — and too many devices connected to the same network can really spoil your online gaming experience. You don’t want your smart fridge to be leeching internet bandwidth that could be used for headshots, so the smart play is to disconnect any device you don’t need during your gaming session. Just don’t unplug anything without the owner’s permission if you’re not the only one in the house.

4. Remove Wi-Fi obstructions

We’ve already said that Wi-Fi signals have trouble passing through obstacles. Even an action as simple as closing a door can affect your connection’s stability and lead to high ping. This can be tricky if you’re relying on a wireless connection to play a fast-paced online game in a crowded flat.

Fortunately, simple problems can be solved with simple solutions. See if you can clear a path between your gaming device and your router by shoving obstructions out of the way. If rearranging the furniture is not an option, try moving your gaming device to another room, closer to your Wi-Fi router — or do the reverse and reposition the router in a clear, open space.

5. Reset your internet connection

Sometimes a poor internet connection has nothing to do with your choice of internet service provider or plan. If you’ve been riding your home router non-stop, chances are its cache is full and it has trouble processing your requests. To clear your router’s cache, unplug it from the power source for half a minute and then turn it back on

6. Factory reset your router

Over time, routers develop quirks due to poorly optimized updates or faulty settings. If you don’t want to dive into your device’s guts and tinker with router setup options and firmware, you can try performing a factory reset as a last resort. A factory reset will restore the device back to its original manufacturer settings, removing any problematic additions in the process.

7. Use a wired internet connection

A wireless connection lets you play from anywhere in the house — but if lag is constantly getting in the way of the frag, you should consider trading convenience for lower ping. A wired connection might limit your movement, but it also generally means a faster internet connection and a smoother gaming experience.

To go from wireless to wired, you’ll need an ethernet cable. You already have one at home (it’s the landline to your router), but you’ll need to get a new one for your gaming device — most modern computers no longer come packed with their own ethernet cable. Cables go from Cat 3 to Cat 8, with higher categories offering better bandwidth and transmission speeds. If you can, spring for at least a Cat 5 — these cables can handle internet speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps.

8. Play on local servers

You don’t want your gaming server to be located somewhere far away — a short distance means lower ping and little lag. Fortunately, publishers know this and pepper game servers all over the globe to satisfy customers from different regions. For example, if you’re from the European Union, playing on gaming servers in Paris or Berlin will yield drastically lower ping than playing on servers in the US.

9. Play at different hours

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you might need to change your online gaming habits to get the most out of your experience. High ping typically rears its ugly head in the early evening, when everyone’s taking a breather after work — to play games with lower ping, switch your online sessions to a different time slot and use the evenings for offline or non-gaming-related activities.

10. Contact your ISP

If nothing on your end seems to work, then maybe the problem lies somewhere further down the line. For example, your ISP could be performing maintenance in your area, forcing it to reroute or limit internet traffic during the repairs. Whatever the case, the problem is out of your hands — there’s nothing you can do to improve ping. Right?

Wrong. If you suspect there’s trouble on your ISP’s end, contact it. In some cases, service representatives might not even be aware of the problem, and your call will spur the company into action. If it’s already working on solving the issue, support specialists might be able to give you an estimate of the scheduled downtime to let you plan your time. Your ISP’s IT professionals can even advise you on how to lower your ping using other means — just don’t be afraid to ask.

11. Get a new internet plan

At the end of the day, you might just have to face the music — no amount of gaming setup, server switches, or rearranging the furniture will turn a slow internet connection into a good one. If the core problem lies with your internet plan, the only way to meaningfully reduce ping in your online games is to pay for a better option.

If you’re thinking about upgrading your plan, don’t just stick to your current ISP — shop around a little first. Other ISPs may have better infrastructure in your area and offer better internet speeds for less. Read online reviews, decide how much internet speed you need, and check out internet speed test comparisons to find the right internet plan for you.

12. Use QoS settings

Quality of service (QoS) is a router setting that lets you rank which devices or types of traffic get priority on your network. Turn it on and assign your gaming device the top priority, and your game’s data will get sent ahead of other traffic on the network. To do that, log in to your router’s admin panel and find the QoS menu (the exact configuration steps depend on your router’s brand, but it’s typically under advanced or network settings).

13. Disable Windows Nagle’s algorithm

Nagle’s algorithm is a TCP/IP (short for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) congestion control mechanism that batches multiple small chunks of data (tinygrams) into fewer, larger packets to reduce network overhead. What this means is that your device sometimes waits a fraction of a second before transmitting data, trading a small delay for lower network overhead. This delay is almost invisible in most everyday tasks, but in gaming, where every extra millisecond counts, any added delay (however small) is still added latency at the end of the day.

A couple of things worth knowing before you get to turning off Nagle’s algorithm. One, disabling the algorithm only affects data sent over TCP, and most fast-paced online games send their gameplay data over User Datagram Protocol (UDP), on which this fix has no effect. Games that lean on TCP tend to use it for chat or matchmaking and usually not the live gameplay, so this fix is more likely to help older or TCP-reliant game titles than current competitive shooters or battle royales.

And two, the registry change that you make by disabling Nagle’s algorithm is system-wide — it applies to every TCP connection on your device, not just your game. So it means that with Nagle’s algorithm disabled, the CPU load and network overhead will likely increase across every other app or process using TCP, which is exactly why the algorithm is switched on by default. Now, a more targeted fix exists in the form of a socket option (TCP_NODELAY), which developers can apply to a single TCP connection in their code, disabling Nagle’s algorithm for just that connection without affecting the rest of your system. But that’s something a game’s developer would need to build in, not something you can turn on yourself as a player.

Regardless, if you want to switch Nagle’s algorithm off, just follow these steps:

1. 1.Before you disable Nagle’s Algorithm, run “ipconfig” in Command Prompt to find your current IP address. 
2. 2.Once you know what it is, open the Windows Registry by clicking on the Start button, typing “regedit” and hitting “Enter.” Make sure to back up your registry first before you make changes. 
3. 3.Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,” then “SYSTEM,” then “CurrentControlSet,” then “Services,” then “Tcpip,” then “Parameters,” and finally “Interfaces.” 
4. 4.Click through the subkeys until you find the one whose “DhcpIPAddress” value matches the IP address you looked up earlier.
5. 5.Create two new DWORD (32-bit) values named “TcpAckFrequency” and “TCPNoDelay” by right-clicking on an empty space in the interface, selecting “New,” and then selecting “New DWORD (32-bit) Value.” 
6. 6.Label each value by copying and pasting the names (quickest way to do it), and set the “Value data” field to 1 for both.

14. Scan for malware

Malware can consume bandwidth and processing power, both of which can drive up your ping without any obvious cause. Scan your device for malware and remove any threats you find. If an infection has been eating into the resources your game needs, clearing it out may help bring your connection and system performance back under control. It’s worth running a malware scan periodically even when ping isn’t the issue, since malware can affect far more than just gaming performance.

Do VPNs help with ping?

Yes, a VPN can bring your ping down, but don’t count on it in most cases. If your ISP’s path to the game server is unstable or the network is congested, a VPN may set up a more optimized path and reduce your ping a little. This isn’t the norm, however, and usually you should expect just slightly higher ping when using a VPN because your traffic will need to be encrypted, encapsulated, and routed through an additional node (the secure VPN server).

Even so, you should really think about using a VPN for gaming because after you connect, nobody monitoring your connection can tell where you go or what you do online, letting you game with more privacy and security. VPN servers can even absorb DDoS attacks aimed at knocking you offline mid-match, which matters far more to most players than a marginal ping improvement ever would.

But wait, you say — doesn’t a VPN slow down internet speeds? Online VPN speed tests show that you’ll barely notice the difference with the fastest VPNs like NordVPN, which posts the best speed results overall (over 817 Mbps) with only 3ms latency overhead compared with other VPNs.