Latency In Games

[Slixzy]

My friend and I play the same game at the same time, and we only live 10 minutes from each other. Except he has the 500Mbps plan, while I have the gigabit fibe 1.5. Somehow he gets lower latency than me in an actual game. I like to play competitively and latency matters allot. I called tech support multiple times but they keep on telling me to do the basic stuff (un plug and plug it back in etc.) I was wondering if anyone could help me. I think its a routing issue. I have a better PC everything than my fiends PC, but still he somehow manages to get lower latency to the servers. What's the point of having fast internet when someone who has 1/3rd of your speeds still gets lower latency lol. Might be time to downgrade or change ISPs and hope I get better routing to the servers with them. 
For more Info, I'm playing on ethernet (cat 6e) cable and my motherboard is a Asus ROG Z390-F which is capable of 2.5g+ internet speeds.

[dks · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the reality of gaming. No ISP has any control of routing and latency beyond their own network. Once your packets leave any ISP's network they are at the mercy of internet routing tables along the way to their destination and the number of players on the destination server. A ping or latency under 30 ms is very playable. Over 150 ms and you will have issues playing. Some gaming servers boot you out automatically over a certain ping or latency. Unfortunately, ping or latency is a variable factor based on any number of factors. Computer power really isn't a factor, nor, as you have found, is your profile. Bell has no influence, either. You can find a good primer on ping or latency and gaming here.

[Vanadiel · Accepted solution]

If you are using the same ISP (Bell), the routing will be identical. If you want to verify you could both run a tracert to the game servers, and it should match.

How are you measuring in game latency? Latency to the server can and will differ from in game latency. Games add artificial latency to ensure a level latency playing field as much as possible.

What is the actual latency? If you are 15 msec and your friend has 3msec, you will still both be the same latency in game because of what I described above.

[Slixzy]

Thank you for your reply and explaining how latency works. My friend sees "18ms" while I see "30ms" beside the same server. We play Fortnite and its all about who has lower delay so it just gets really annoying because whoever has less delay usually wins 80% of the time. 

[dks]

I feel your pain. When I did more gaming, i hated the players with low pings. When I understood that it was beyond my control, I learned to enjoy the game and still have fun. 

[Vanadiel]

Can sometimes be caused by system settings that are not optimal. You can try making sure you use a wired connection in case you use wireless, and drop down the graphics in game quality.

Also check your network driver settings and ensure IP4 is offloaded as much as possible. Flow control can be another factor, so can any firewall setting that is to high for the resources of the firewall.

[Elo2x]

Getting really bad packet loss while playing Rocket League, nothing wrong with anything else its just bad packet loss. Need a fix asap

[Vanadiel]

Can be caused by many reasons, and usually it resolves itself after a while. If the packet loss is only related to Rocket League, it's more that likely related to their servers or a routing issues.

[SoSnobbb]

Did you figure out how to fix this . I have the same exact problem . When I was on the 500plan I had better performance that now that I have upgraded to the 1.5 plan . I also play Fn and most of the time I'm over 50ms latency  even if my ping on FN show 10 to 20 I still know I'm lagging.  It;s so obvious when I'm not lagging, I do much better . Hope to hear from you , thx 

[Slixzy]

Nope. I barely play the game now so I don’t even care and when I was looking for a solution, I couldn’t find any. You can read the other replies on here nd see if they work but I don’t think there’s a real solution because you can’t change the route ur packets take to the server after they’ve left ISP thingy? Idk if I’m making sense lol. 

[SoSnobbb]

Thx for the reply . I guess it is what it is and we'll never be pro players. lol. .  

[Slixzy]

Lmao you could try getting a new modem from bell cuz that will give u a new IP address and maybe ur routing will be better to the server. But even if going pro is ur goal 0 ping won’t make a difference lol. I used to get hard 0 ping in creative 1v1 maps even then I used to get harassed by couple people. Even tho I was on 240fps lol. Just saying ping won’t make a big difference but it will make the game more fun to play. 

[Vanadiel]

Routing is not determined by the modem, and there's no way to edit this.

However, there are VPN services like WTFast that are designed to provide gamers with lower latency connections.

There are also regular VPN services to get different routing to destinations.

Also keep in mind pings to game servers do not matter as much as actual in game ping. That is because game servers artificially control ping times to avoid people with really low latency connections to have an advantage over people with higher latency connections.

[dks]

You make perfect sense. One of the issues with on line gaming is that routing is beyond anyone’s control. 

[Bikergofast]

I have a similar issue in Battlefield 2042. For about the last 4-6 weeks I've been getting this warning at the top of the screen that latency is high, it looks like ping in 90s and above. The small yellow icon shows up even when the latency warning function is off.  I too have the 1.5GB plan.

I've tried changing to the google DNS as someone suggested I try that, not sure how likely it is to help but nothing changed. Should it affect my ping?

Any other suggestions I can try?  When I called Bell to run tests they find nothing wrong so it would suggest it's in my house but I haven't done anything other than that DNS swap.