We’ve all heard this term before when referring to online multiplayer games, But what does ping mean in gaming?
Ping, also referred to as latency in gaming, is the delay between your computer and the server you’re playing on. Basically, if your internet connection is slow for whatever reason, your ping will be high, and the connection to the server you’re connected to will be unstable, rendering your character lagging, rubberbanding, or even disconnecting from the game session.
Ping is measured in milliseconds, that’s why you could see a metric in your game’s user interface like Ping: 30 ms, meaning that the data set transmitted from your PC or game console to the server and back will take 30 milliseconds to travel.
Is high ping good or bad?
All-in-all what is a good ping for gaming? Generally, when playing online video games, your ping should be below 50 milliseconds, so the lower the better. Everything beyond that, especially above 100 milliseconds (which is 10% of a second) will have a negative impact on your gaming experience. An opponent with a better (lower) ping or latency than you will have a massive advantage as it will register their actions quicker than yours, leaving you vulnerable to the delay between your actions. So remember, having a high ping is bad.
Why is my ping so high?
This is a question you might be asking yourself if you notice lagging in online multiplayer games, or if you see a high ping notification in the user interface. There are a ton of reasons why your ping is so high but we’ll go through the most common. So let’s get busy and troubleshoot how to fix high ping.
- Wifi connection. A common mistake for console and laptop (even PCs sometimes if they have wifi) owners is to connect their devices via wifi, a generally awesome technology that makes our lives easier, but an unreliable solution when it comes to playing competitive online games. Wifi is slower than an ethernet port connection plus there’s also the problem of correctly positioning your router relative to your devices. A wall, couch, or any object blocking your wifi router trajectory to your device will add up ping, slowing your gaming sessions down. It’s important to switch to an ethernet cable connection when playing competitive games like Valorant, Counter-Strike, PUBG, Dota 2, League of Legends, and the list goes on.
- Uploading or downloading in the background. Make sure you aren’t running any software clients that might be doing background updates in the form of downloads, or uploading content to other users or servers. There’s a reason why the default Steam updating system is turned off while gaming. It’s like that so you don’t get high ping while in a game session.
- VPN connection. If your VPN is active and running from another country, far away from yours, chances are your latency or ping will be sky-high. Make sure you turn off your VPN before getting into your multiplayer game of choice (or try activating it somewhere close, like a neighbouring state or country).
- Firewalls and Virus protection software. There are a number of firewall and anti-virus programs that monitors your internet connection in real-time, thus slowing down your connection. These software programs are meant to filter any harmful data packs incoming to your system, adding milliseconds to your ping. Try disabling your anti-virus or firewall while gaming to see if you get an improvement. Just remember to turn them back on as they serve a good purpose. Alternatively, you could whitelist your video games of choice in these software programs so they will ignore your game and leave it to take as much bandwidth as necessary.
- Slow internet connection. Sometimes the answer is as simple as it gets. Your internet connection is bad. If you do some tests and find out that the current service you’re using is slow, try looking for a different internet provider that offers higher internet speeds and more reliable connections, even if you pay a few bucks extra.
Hope this article was helpful in your quest to lower your ping in order to get more frags.
