Shellfire

Anyone who has played multiplayer games knows what it means to have bad ping. Whether it’s unstable or far too high, both can influence your gaming experience to such an extent as to ruin your fun. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, we’ll give you a few solutions in this article on how to recognize and eliminate the various causes.

How high or low is the ideal ping?

Ping can be represented in different ways. As a rule, the ping is measured in milliseconds (ms) and should ideally be below 60 when you play multiplayer online with your Xbox Series X or Series S.

With a ping of 80, you can usually expect various difficulties like lag during multiplayer games. A ping of 200, for example, means you’ll only see another human opponent’s actions on the monitor after a delay of two tenths of a second.

Basically, the lower the ping, the better.

What are some ways to lower ping on your Xbox Series X or Series S?

There are several ways to improve ping on the Xbox Series X or Series S. The following solutions guarantee success: checking your Internet connection, connecting your Xbox to the Internet via Ethernet cable instead of WLAN, using a VPN, and changing the default DNS server configuration on your Xbox.

Let’s go into a little more detail:

Check your internet connection

The Xbox has a useful and efficient integrated tool for this.

The remote play setup clearly displays which configurations are weak. Checking the Internet connection should always be the first and most basic method of error analysis.

Connect the Xbox via cable instead of WLAN

Try to connect your Xbox with an Ethernet cable. Often, the reception between your router and your WLAN card can be impaired. This could be an obstacle between the Xbox and the router, or they could just be too far away from each other.

If it’s the distance and you don’t have a long enough cable to connect with, we recommend connecting via powerline adapter.

Use a VPN

Often, though not always, it helps to set up a VPN connection to stabilize or even reduce your ping. This is because the data packets can sometimes get to the game server via a more direct path through the VPN server. In addition, your Internet provider can’t prioritize your data transfer depending on the service, since it no longer has access to your data.

The problem is, Xbox doesn’t have an integrated VPN function. Still, we can show you how to use a VPN connection with Xbox in the article “VPN on Xbox Series X & Series S: How it Works” or in the following video.

You can also connect your Xbox to another VPN router or mobile hotspot to establish an encrypted connection. Still, the easiest and cheapest option if you don’t have a VPN router yet, is to use the Shellfire Box.

Click here to learn more about the Shellfire Box.

Change the DNS server configuration on the Xbox

This is done by accessing Network > Configure Internet Connection. There, you can select manual mode under the DNS setting and enter a new DNS server.

You can try one of the following options:

• OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
• Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
• IBM Quad9: 9.9.9.9
• Google: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

If changing the DNS server configuration doesn’t help, you can easily undo the change.

Play on servers that are closer to you geographically

In multiplayer games, you often have the option many different servers. Most of the time, the load of the serve and the location are also displayed. Always try to use the one closest to home first.

Conclusion

The causes of a high ping can be many, but this also applies to the solutions. We have summarized all the most important ones for you in this article.

Featured image: kunilanskap / 123RF