Ping is a measure of latency, and it determines how quickly a signal is sent and returned to your computer. From a gaming perspective, your ping rate is how long it takes for the software to recognize your action.
While professional gamers can avoid high ping rates, as they’re able to upgrade their hardware, recreational gamers are usually left with the task of having to troubleshoot. If you want to lower your ping rate and reduce lag when using the internet, then there are a few things you can do.
What Affects Ping Rate?
Your internet connection speed will have a big influence on your ping rate. For online gamers, internet speed is everything. Speed can be affected by several things too, such as how much data your network has to handle, and how many users are connected at any given time.
Generally, the higher your ping rate, the slower your game will be, but even if you have a high ping rate, that doesn’t mean that every game you play is going to be slow. Take this Age of the Gods slots game, for example.
Even though it has four bonus games and four progressive jackpots, the playing requirements aren’t high. The random bonus features, while seemingly extravagant, are all self-contained and thus make little or no noticeable difference to overall processing performance. Games like this can operate independently precisely because the RNG and graphics are all built into the software.
In short, games like this don’t have to connect to a server time and time again to function. If you are playing a first-person shooter on the other hand, or a game with demanding graphics, this requires a constant connection, so your experience will likely be compromised if you have a high ping rate.
Fixing your High Ping Rate
The importance of regularly maintaining your computer cannot be stressed enough. Of particular note here is ensuring that your ethernet cable is of a sufficiently recent model. These cables are available in Category 3 to Category 8. Most households have Category 5 or higher, so if you have an outdated cable, this should be the first thing to look at.
Similarly, one factor likely affecting your ping rate is your router and how up-to-date it is. Deleting unnecessary cache from your router is one easy way of bringing the number of pings down.
Many applications running in the background, which you may or may not be aware of, can usually be closed without causing any issues and improve your game’s responsivity. A game’s settings, if they are over-optimized, will also impact your ping rate.
If you’re unsure whether you have a good ping rate or not, as a standard rule, you should be aiming for anything below 100ms. Everyday gamers, however, should probably aim for 50ms or less, while professional gamers may even want to aim for 20ms or less. You can easily run a ping test, as explained here by How-To Geek, to find out what your ping rate is currently.
At the end of the day, if the game you are playing seems to be performing well, then you probably have nothing to worry about, but if you’ve been experiencing lag or stuttering graphics, then this is a sign that you should probably try to lower your ping rate.
