Tips to reduce high ping and latency
- Move closer to the router: If using Wi-Fi, move closer to the router. Many things such as walls, floors, electronic interference, and other physical obstacles can interfere with Wi-Fi.
- Close any downloads and background programs: Ensure no downloads are running on any devices on the network. Downloads and Uploads can saturate the connection and cause higher ping response times. Especially services such as Torrents, Google Drive, One Drive or DropBox
- Restart your router: Some routers can slow down with extended use. Routers process a lot of information and create internal logs. Think of it as a computer that can slow time over time. So an occasional restart clears it from the applications that caused it to slow down.
- Game on local servers: When gaming, playing on a locally hosted server will always give a much lower ping than an international server.
- Connect directly to the router: Connect directly to the router using an Ethernet cable if your device supports this. The ping will always be much lower on a wired connection than on Wi-fi.
- Connect fewer devices on your network: The more devices connected to the network, the higher the latency will be. This is mainly due to all the devices using up network traffic as they all share the same bandwidth.
- Upgrade your router: If you are using an old router, upgrading to a newer router can make a big difference.
- Contact your ISP: At times the performance on a line can degrade due to line degradation or faults. Your ISP would do some troubleshooting if all the above steps did not
- Upgrade your package: If you are using a lot of devices or sharing the internet with many users. More bandwidth would be required for everyone to share.