Internet Speed for Gaming – What Really Matters

Gamers often buy the fastest plan available, then find that games still lag. That is because online gaming uses very little bandwidth while you play. What decides how a game feels is how quickly and how consistently small packets travel to the game server and back.

The numbers that matter, in order

1. Latency (ping): the round-trip time to the game server. Lower means your actions register sooner. See ping vs latency.
2. Jitter: how much that latency varies. High jitter causes stutter and rubber-banding, even when average ping looks fine. See jitter.
3. Packet loss: missing updates cause teleporting players and missed shots. See packet loss.
4. Latency under load: whether ping spikes when someone else in the house is downloading or uploading. See bufferbloat.
5. Download speed: mainly matters for downloading games and updates, which can be tens of gigabytes. A faster line saves hours of waiting but does not reduce lag in play.

What to aim for

Rules of thumb, measured to a nearby server:

Measure	Great	Playable	Problematic
Latency	under 30 ms	30–80 ms	over 100 ms
Jitter	under 5 ms	5–20 ms	over 30 ms
Packet loss	0%	under 1%	over 2%
Added latency under load	under 30 ms	30–100 ms	over 100 ms

Competitive shooters and fighting games are the most sensitive. Turn-based and strategy games tolerate much more.

Why your in-game ping can differ from a speed test

A speed test measures latency to its test server. SpeedCheckWeb uses the nearest Cloudflare data centre, which is usually close to you. Your game measures latency to the game’s server, which may be in another city or country. If your speed-test latency is low but your in-game ping is high:

• check that the game is set to the nearest region or server, and
• remember that physical distance sets a floor that no connection can beat.

How to reduce lag

1. Use an Ethernet cable. This is the single most effective fix for jitter and loss.
2. If you must use Wi-Fi, use 5 GHz or 6 GHz, stay close to the router, and avoid range extenders.
3. Fix bufferbloat. Turn on Smart Queue Management (SQM) or “adaptive QoS” in your router. Algorithms such as FQ-CoDel keep your game packets from waiting behind big downloads.
4. Schedule big transfers. Set consoles and PCs to download updates overnight, and pause cloud backups while you play.
5. Choose the right game server region.
6. Restart and update your router, and keep network drivers up to date.

Cloud gaming is different

Cloud gaming streams video of the game to you, so it needs both low latency and steady download bandwidth, often tens of Mbps for high-resolution streams. Check your service’s own published requirements, and test at the time of day when you usually play.

Run the ping and bufferbloat test to see exactly how your connection behaves when it is busy.

Sources

1. RFC 2681 – A Round-trip Delay Metric for IPPM
2. RFC 8290 – The Flow Queue CoDel Packet Scheduler and Active Queue Management Algorithm

Figures from third parties can change; we review guides regularly. See our editorial policy.