You can’t win every game. Sometimes, you simply run into a more advanced or better-equipped player. But one thing you absolutely don’t want to do when online gaming is losing due to a slow internet connection.
I play a lot of competitive online games like Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (may it rest in peace). I’ve played them for thousands of hours, and of the many foes I’ve faced in those games, the worst one doesn’t even show up on the leaderboard: lag.
Getting stuck in a match where you’re operating 300 milliseconds behind the competition is no fun. Dealing with high ping when 20 minutes of your time and your competitive rank are on the line is diabolical. Here’s what you can do to fix the problem.
Let’s talk about ping
You’ve probably heard of ping if you’re an avid online gamer. Even if you haven’t, I’m willing to bet that you’ve seen a little red flashing speedometer symbol in the corner of your screen in a multiplayer game — probably right before wondering why you’ve seemingly dropped to zero health out of nowhere.
Also known as latency, ping measures the time it takes for data to move across the network. It tells you how many milliseconds between inputting a command and the server receiving it.
High ping leads to discrepancies between what you think should be happening in-game and what’s actually happening. This is why you’ll hear about gamers absolutely enraged with “lag.” It makes you feel like you’re lagging behind everyone else and will ruin any chance of having a good time.
Your ping is a product of two things: the quality of your internet connection and your location relative to where the server is hosted. For the most part, you can only really improve the quality of your internet service. Gaming companies decide where a game’s dedicated servers will be set up, and you simply need to deal with your distance from them.
If you’re looking to get an edge with your home broadband, there are many ways to do that, including upgrading your internet service, switching from a wireless to a wired connection or ensuring you have the best modem and router for the job.
But what if your connection is masking your location, making it seem farther away than you actually are? My problem was simple, and the solution to speed up my connection was just as simple: It’s all about the VPN.
What is a VPN and what does it do to your internet?
A virtual private network, or VPN, is software that encrypts your internet traffic. It allows you to browse with much more privacy and disguise your browsing to look like it’s happening from anywhere in the world.
There are many reasons to use a VPN. If you live in a country where the press is regulated and suppressed, a VPN allows you to get an unfiltered view of what’s really going on.
I use a VPN for something far less important: Digging into the movies and shows in Netflix’s catalog that aren’t available in the United States.
Effectively tricking your broadband provider into letting you access the internet from different geographic locations can be a great way to educate and entertain yourself. There’s one time when you usually want to make sure you don’t have the VPN running, though, and that’s playing online games.
Your home internet still makes a difference. Should you upgrade?
While turning off your VPN might reduce the latency you experience while playing games online, your home broadband still matters.
I have a Verizon G3100 Wi-Fi 6 router at home, and I generally fluctuate between 200 and 400Mbps upload and download speeds, depending on how many devices are eating up bandwidth. While those numbers might be important for downloading new games, they aren’t that important for playing games online.
Ookla reported that the median download speed for American households in February 2025 was 280Mbps, and the median upload speed was 41Mbps. (Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) These speeds are more than sufficient for online gaming, so most American households should be good to go.
Your upload and download speeds will affect your latency up to a certain point, but your distance from the server is what really matters. Check out these speed tests I ran at home to see what I’m talking about.
Below, you’ll see the results of a speed test conducted with a connection to a server in Secaucus, New Jersey. This server is the closest one to my home, and I get a smooth 26-millisecond upload latency when connected to it. A 50- to 60-millisecond latency is really good for online gaming, so it’s smooth sailing for me when I’m connected to dedicated servers here in the northeast US.
