Online games are very sensitive to the latency of the Internet connection, but above all, to the jitter of the connection. Jitter is the variation in latency at a given time, and it is essential to be able to enjoy online games without “lag” problems. While browsing the Internet or downloading via P2P is not a problem if we have high latency or too high jitter, in games it is. For this reason, it is possible that the internet connection works well for you, but still, you face problems while playing online.
Reasons why you can’t play well and solutions
There are many reasons why you can’t play online properly, from configuration issues due to ports not opening on your router, to high latency and jitter when connecting over Wi-Fi. Next, we will explain the main problems and the solutions that we can adopt.
- I get moderate NAT errors in games: This problem is caused by you have not opened the ports to the console. It is highly recommended shelter the DMZ from your router to the private IP address of the console, in this way, they will be able to establish a communication from Internet towards your console, and to play without problem.
- I have connectivity issues on the console: Check if you are connecting to the Wired or Wi-Fi router. You should always connect through a cable for the best possible performance, more speed, and less connection latency. If you cannot connect by cable, always try to connect via the 5 GHz band. Finally, if you don’t have a 5 GHz band on your router or the signal is very weak, you have no choice but to connect on 2.4 GHz. But in the latter case, you will have a significant jitter in the connection.
- I can play but everything is delayed and with “lagazos”: this is the main problem of games, in this case you have high latency in the connection and/or high jitter. To remedy this, the first thing to do is connect via network cable to your router. If you already have the console connected by cable, then it is a problem of the Internet connection itself and not of the local network, in this case you will not be able to do much, because it depends on the operator and the technology (ADSL, cable or fibre) .
- I play without problems, until I connect other computers or devices to the network: This problem is caused by Router QoS, that is, the configuration of the quality of service. It is very important that you use a gaming router, or at least that it has a QoS (Quality of Service) menu in order to prioritize console traffic as much as possible. This will not only allow the console to have priority in terms of speed, but we will also have lower latency in the connection, and, of course, significantly lower jitter.
As you have seen, we have many possible issues while playing online that would only affect games, not web browsing or downloads. And it is very important that everything is well configured to play without problems. Before ending with this list of the main errors, we must explain one that is very common, and which is not related to the Internet connection, but to how to connect the console to the router and what you can do in these cases.
- I can only connect to the router via Wi-FiWhat is the best option in my case? If you can only connect via WiFi to the router because it is very far from the console, you have several options to improve performance. The first option is to buy a simultaneous triple band WiFi Mesh system, to have a frequency band dedicated to the interconnection of nodes. You place one of the nodes near the console, and the console can be connected via a network cable to the Mesh node. Another option is to use powerline powerline devices, but every power grid is different, and we can’t guarantee it will work well for you, but you can try it because it may work very well for you.
Nowadays, if you cannot connect directly to the router by cable, we have many ways to have the best performance and to have a user experience similar to that if we connect by cable.