In online video games such as Fortnite or League of Legends, it is essential to reduce latency as much as possible . When a player doesn’t respond properly to the controls they are at a distinct disadvantage and it can be frustrating.
Also known as lag, the most common effects of latency are jumps in action or the fact that your screen, and therefore your character, freezes. We are going to tell you what are the necessary steps to improve your connection, reduce latency as much as possible and that your online games improve their quality.
Better wired than WiFi
Latency or lag is inevitable because all remote communication involves a certain delay in the arrival of data. However, there are measurements of a few milliseconds, ms for short, that do not affect the user at all.
One of the first steps you can take to improve latency is to connect via cable rather than Wi-Fi . Although there is some convenience to connecting wirelessly, since enough cables are needed between power, HDMI, USBs and others, it will always be a better option to connect your gaming device directly by cable.
Connect an Ethernet cable from the device’s Ethernet port to an open LAN port on the router. On consoles like Xbox, the wired connection will connect automatically, while on PlayStation consoles you will have to manually select the wired connection or you will remain connected to WiFi as long as it works. If you have already opted for this connection and notice that something is wrong, check the cable connector, which breaks quite easily. They are things that are visible to the naked eye and seem obvious, but which we do not always think about.
If you have no choice but to connect via WiFi, there are a number of aspects that you should review. For example, do not place the router at a point that affects signal propagation, such as behind the television, near a window, etc., as this limits coverage.
You should also optimize WiFi channels. Whenever we can, we should choose the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band , which theoretically offers better signal performance than 2.4 Ghz. Although all this will also depend on the saturation level of each of these spaces.
The most advanced routers try to avoid saturation through a spectrum analyzer that helps to automatically select the best channel, but the ideal is to do it manually and check the operation with each one of them. For this reason, it is recommended that we be able to identify which channels around us are in use, which have more traffic and which is the most recommended for our home. Currently, and in an accessible way, there are applications like Wifi Analyzer for Android or Windows 10 that give us this information by showing the saturation and strength of the signal for each frequency band.
Improve latency with DNS
Sometimes the bug for which we have a lot of latency is in the domain name systems (DNS) . These values can be changed manually by accessing the ‘Network and Internet’ section, from ‘Settings’. There you have to enter the ‘WiFi’ or ‘Ethernet’ section, depending on how we are connected, and click on ‘Change adapter options’. An icon appears that allows access to our network and we must click with the right button, and then enter ‘Properties’. A menu appears below in which you have to check the option ‘Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)’ and click on ‘Properties’. A window opens where we can click on ‘Use the following DNS server addresses’.
Once we click on ‘Use the following DNS server addresses’ we can enter other DNS, to try to solve our connection problems. One of the most used is the Google DNS (8.8.8.8 for the ‘Preferred DNS Server’ and 8.8.4.4 for the ‘Alternate DNS Server’, or, for the IPv6 protocol, these two: 2001:4860:4860: :8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844). Other DNS also popular are those of Quad9, focused on privacy and security (9.9.9.9 for the ‘Preferred DNS Server’ and 149.112.112.112 for the ‘Alternate DNS Server’, or, for the IPv6 protocol, these two: 2620:fe::fe and 2620:fe::9).
