Everything You Need To Know About Broadband For Gaming

Online gaming is huge, with millions of us logging on to our favorite games every day.

Connectivity is key when gaming online. Reaction time is as important in your broadband as it is in your game, which makes choosing your connection vital.

That’s what we’re going to discuss today.

We’re going to share everything you need to know about broadband for gaming.

What speed do I need for gaming?

You don’t need the fastest broadband connection to play online. The faster, the better, of course, especially if there are multiple gamers in your household.

Speed is useful when downloading games or patches, but it won’t drastically impact your gameplay.

What’s more important is latency or lag. That’s the time the signal goes from your controller or mouse to the game server.

The higher the latency, the longer the journey takes. This has more impact on online gaming than pure connection speed.

If you’re a streamer or upload videos to YouTube, you may benefit from faster broadband. You’re going to be more interested in upload speed rather than download though.

Are there broadband providers that specialize in gaming?

Not many broadband providers specialize in gaming, but many have gaming-specific products.

This is mainly marketing, though. They may include extra features and advertise low latency (lag) connections, but it’s mainly marketing. You’re not actually getting anything extra in terms of the broadband connection that you couldn’t get elsewhere.

All good quality broadband providers should be able to deliver a fast, low-latency connection whether you go for a gaming-specific product or not.

My broadband is fast, but I'm still getting lag and jitter – What can I do?

Every broadband connection may suffer from high latency at times, but there’s no need to suffer in silence.

There are things you can do to fix the issue before raising it with your provider.

Test your ping

Your ping is a measure of latency. The higher the number, the higher the latency (lag). This is bad news for gamers as it means a longer delay before you make a move, and it is reflected on the game server.

If you use Windows, you can test your ping easily.

1. Open a CMD window as an administrator
2. Type ‘ping 8.8.8.8’ and hit Enter

That IP address is a Google DNS server and should return the results in a few seconds. If you know the IP address of your game server, use that instead.

Once you see results, you’re looking for Loss and Time. Ideally, you should see Lost = 0 and time <15ms.

If you use Mac OS, you can use the Network Utility for this task; select the Ping tab, enter an IP address, and hit Ping. You’re also looking for 0% loss and low times.

There are websites that can test ping, too, such as DeviceTests.

Who else is using the connection?

If your usually fast broadband is suddenly slowing down, log onto your router and see who else is using it.

If you live in a busy household, someone else may be downloading, streaming, or using the connection.

If this happens a lot, consider upgrading the speed or negotiating downloading large files outside of game time.

Try a wired connection to your router

If you’re experiencing slow speeds or latency, try a wired connection instead.

This may require a little creative wiring or some DIY, but if you’re a frequent gamer, this can be a worthwhile investment of time and effort.

Ethernet is much, much faster than Wi-Fi, so you should notice instant results.

Connect to servers close to you to minimize lag

Not all games have lobbies where you can choose your server, but if you can, keep it local.

The shorter the journey your traffic has to make, the faster it will be. If you have the option to choose a game server at your location, we strongly recommend doing so.

Broadband and Gaming

Broadband speed does impact online gaming but it isn’t the only influence. In fact, we would say speed is less important than latency for most gamers.

If you’re having issues with speed or latency, try the tips above. If it still isn’t working, contact your provider as that may be something they can do.

If all else fails, you can always switch broadband providers, but that’s a move of last resort!