How to Lower Your Ping
Run a Ping Test first to get your baseline. Then work through these fixes in order - Most people are done by step 3.
Quick Reference
Measure first
Run a ping test before and after each fix. Changes often produce immediate, measurable results - You'll know within 60 seconds whether it worked.
Ping floor is physics
You cannot beat the speed of light. If the server is 5,000 km away, the minimum possible ping is ~30 ms. Fixes only help with latency above that floor.
Fix 1 - Switch from Wi-Fi to Ethernet
Wi-Fi adds 2–20 ms to your base ping and introduces jitter from radio channel contention. A wired Ethernet connection removes this overhead entirely. This is the highest-impact, lowest-cost fix available.
How to do it: Plug an Ethernet cable from your router directly into your PC, laptop, or console. Cat 5e cable is sufficient for connections up to 1 Gbps. If your device has no Ethernet port, a USB-C to Ethernet adapter costs around £10–15 and works immediately.
Expected reduction: typically 3–15 ms on average ping, with a much more dramatic reduction in jitter.
Ethernet vs Wi-Fi speed comparison →
Fix 2 - Choose the closest server or region
Physics sets a hard floor on ping based on distance. Every 1,000 km adds roughly 5–7 ms of minimum latency over a well-routed connection. Choosing a server region on the other side of the world is the most common cause of high in-game ping.
How to do it: In your game, set the region to your country or continent. In matchmaking-based games (Valorant, CS2, Warzone), use the region selector in settings. Some games auto-select - Verify it chose correctly. Our test servers automatically select the nearest location for your speed tests.
Fix 3 - Close background bandwidth consumers
Active downloads, cloud sync, and background streaming fill your router's transmit buffer. When this buffer overflows, new packets queue behind the bulk transfer - Adding unpredictable latency to your gaming traffic. This is called buffer bloat.
How to do it: Before gaming or calls, pause: cloud sync (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive), game updates (Steam, PlayStation, Xbox), antivirus updates, and any active downloads. Check your router's device list for unexpected high-bandwidth usage from other household devices.
Fix 4 - Enable QoS on your router
Quality of Service (QoS) lets your router prioritise gaming and VoIP packets over bulk transfers. Even if a download is running, QoS ensures your game packets are served first - Preventing the buffer bloat described above.
How to do it: Log into your router admin panel (usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1). Find the QoS or Traffic Priority section. Set gaming or the specific device to highest priority. Exact steps vary by router brand - Search "[your router model] QoS setup" for model-specific instructions.
Fix 5 - Restart your router
Router routing tables and ARP caches can become stale over time. A restart forces the router to reconnect to your ISP fresh and clear queued data from its buffers. This often reduces ping by 5–20 ms on routers that haven't been restarted recently.
How to do it: Unplug the router's power cable for 30 seconds, then plug it back in. Wait 60 seconds for the connection to fully re-establish before retesting.
Fix 6 - Disable your VPN
VPNs route all traffic through an intermediary server, adding routing distance and encryption overhead. A VPN to a server in a different country can add 30–100 ms of additional ping. For gaming, disable the VPN unless you have a specific reason to use one.
How to do it: Open your VPN app and disconnect. Retest ping immediately. If ping drops significantly, the VPN was the cause. If you need a VPN for security, choose one with WireGuard protocol and a server in your own country.
Fix 7 - Switch to a faster DNS server
DNS affects how quickly domain names resolve, not the ongoing game connection ping. However, for applications that frequently look up new servers (matchmaking, voice chat), slow DNS adds noticeable lag to connection establishment.
Recommended DNS servers:
- Cloudflare:
1.1.1.1and1.0.0.1 - Google:
8.8.8.8and8.8.4.4
Set these in your network adapter settings (Windows: Network Adapter Properties → IPv4) or in your router admin panel to apply to all devices. Test which DNS is fastest for you →
Fix 8 - Test at different times to isolate ISP congestion
If your ping is 20 ms at 9 AM and 80 ms at 9 PM every day, your ISP's local network is overloaded during peak hours - Nothing at your end will fix this. Confirming it is time-dependent gives you documented evidence to present to your ISP. Check how your ISP ranks →
If ISP congestion is confirmed and persistent, switching providers is the only effective solution.
What won't lower your ping
- Faster download/upload speeds - Ping is determined by routing and distance, not bandwidth. Upgrading from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps won't change your ping at all.
- "Ping boosters" and "lag reducers" - Most are scams. They cannot route data faster than the physical infrastructure allows.
- Changing your DNS - Useful for connection setup time, but won't affect ongoing game ping once connected.
How to lower your ping
- Measure your baseline ping. Run a ping test before making changes so you can confirm whether each fix actually reduces latency.
- Switch to a wired connection. Plug the device into the router with an Ethernet cable to remove Wi-Fi overhead, the single highest-impact fix for most people.
- Choose the closest server or region. Set your game or application to the nearest region so distance adds the least possible latency to your connection.
- Clear the connection and prioritize traffic. Pause background downloads and cloud sync, then enable QoS on your router so latency-sensitive traffic is served first.
- Retest and isolate ISP issues. Run the ping test again after each change, and test at different times of day to identify peak-hour congestion you cannot fix at home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does more download bandwidth lower my ping?
No, ping is set by the physical distance to the server and the quality of the route, not by how many megabits your plan delivers. Moving from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps leaves your ping unchanged. Extra bandwidth only helps ping indirectly by making it less likely a download saturates your link and causes buffer bloat.
What is a noticeable improvement in ping worth chasing?
For most real-time uses, shaving 10 to 20 ms is clearly perceptible, while differences under 5 ms are hard to notice. The biggest single gain usually comes from moving off Wi-Fi to Ethernet, which removes wireless overhead and steadies the connection. Beyond that, gains get smaller because you approach the physics floor set by distance.
Why does my ping jump only when someone else is using the internet?
That pattern is buffer bloat: another device saturates the connection, the router queues the backlog in a large buffer, and your game packets wait behind it. The result is ping that is fine when idle but spikes into the hundreds of milliseconds under load. Router QoS or Smart Queue Management fixes it by prioritizing latency-sensitive traffic.
Can I lower ping to a game server on the other side of the world?
Only marginally, because distance sets a hard minimum: light and signals in fiber take real time to travel, roughly 5 to 7 ms per 1,000 km each way. No setting or product beats that floor. The effective fix is choosing a game server or region closer to you rather than trying to speed up a long-distance route.