It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the birds are chirping, light grey clouds can be seen covering the sky, the flowers in your garden are swaying with the cool breeze and you grab your mug of coffee and invite your friends online to play your favorite game.
You had been looking forward to this day. Playing the final round of the famous car racing game with your best friends was what you were craving for so long. Just as you buck yourself up and are about to win the race, your computer screen freezes and you end up cursing yourself and the day.
We can understand how frustrating this entire situation can be. It can really ruin your entire mood and day. So what can you do to avoid such a heart-breaking situation? Well first things first, get your hands on a reliable internet service provider like Cox that can help you enjoy a smooth gaming experience. By subscribing to Cox internet you will get access to incredible download speeds and its panoramic WiFi will help you enhance both your streaming and gaming experience.
Now that you have a stable internet connection at home, let us move forward and talk about the ways you can reduce the lag in order to enjoy a seamless gaming experience. So sit back, relax and keep reading.
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Check your internet speed
As we have mentioned above, checking your internet connection and ensuring that it provides you with lightning-fast speeds will immensely help you in enhancing your gaming experience. So begin by testing the speed of your internet. Generally, for online gaming, you are required to have a speed of approximately 20 to 30 Mbps for you to enjoy a smooth experience.
Another significant component is bandwidth. If, for example, every single person in your house is using the same bandwidth to download movies or stream music, your latency as well as ping rates will be heavily impacted. I mean there is always an easy way out and you can consider playing your favorite games when everyone else is asleep.
But come on do you really want to disturb your sleep cycle and get big dark circles? Even your friends would not agree to stay up all night and miss work the next morning just for your gaming sessions. Hence, it is always better to step out of your comfort zone and get access to a fast connection that will guarantee a smooth gaming experience.
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Reset your router
Whenever our phones or laptops stop working or get extremely slow, we try and restart these devices so that they can go back to running smoothly. So why can’t you do the same with your router?
Rebooting your router is a very effective strategy because by doing so you will bless it with an opportunity to empty its short-term memory. Another name for this memory is cache. Choosing the less busy channel for each frequency is another reason why it is essential to restart your router. All of these steps will in turn help you in enhancing your connection.
However, before rebooting your router keep in mind that if your router is brand new, well just restart it only once a month. On the other hand, if your router is crusty old, then make sure to restart it on a daily basis.
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Look for viruses and malware
If at any point, you detect a virus on your laptop or desktop, well, be ready to experience all kinds of problems. Don’t get too scared and just follow the simple solution that we will be telling you next.
If such a situation arises, just head over to your computer tools or install an antivirus program in your system in order to get rid of such attacks in the future. This approach will not only aid you in solving the annoying lag issue, but it will also improve your system’s security.
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Make sure your devices are up to date
This point is linked to the performance of your system software. Just make sure that all the programs, applications, plugins, and other components are regularly updated. This practice will guarantee the finest results and will help you get rid of all the bugs ruining your experience.
We are saying this because it actively helps in keeping the malware as well as viruses from intruding into the system and making it slow.
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Make use of an Ethernet cable
If you really crave a perfect gaming night with no interruptions, and you wish to reduce lag and attain the best internet speed, then our advice for you would be to utilize an Ethernet cable instead of linking your device to the internet with the help of WiFi.
Why are we saying this? Because when you make use of WiFi, you are likely to face problems like high latency owing to the speeds that will essentially be divided between other gadgets, gadgets that will also be connected to the internet.
Nevertheless, if you connect your gadget to the internet modem using the famous and effective Ethernet cable, then without any doubt the speeds will be directly transferred to your device. This way you will be able to attain the actual speeds from the primary source.
Yes, this wireless connection blesses you with convenience as well as flexibility; however, it is not perfect and has a few drawbacks. This type of connection can encounter issues like barriers that hinder the signals being transmitted nearby by other devices. As a result, you can experience distortion and your ISP might be unable to meet its maximum speed guaranteed.
Final words
After reading this article, you might have noticed that there are countless solutions that you can experiment with in order to reduce the lag while playing games online. The most significant points however will always be enhancing your internet speed and keeping your computer up to date in order to get rid of the lag-related problems.
