We know how hard it is to fight the never-ending battle between you and lag, ping spikes, and more. Just like what a lot of gamers say - the lower the ping, the better your gaming experience. So first and foremost, you need to know what a ping is and how does it affect your gameplay. A ping is the response time between two computers. When it comes to online gaming, a ping shows the response time between the client and the game server. Ping time is measured in milliseconds, and tell you how long a packet data takes to travel back and forth from the client and the game server. Simply put, whenever a gamer connects to an online game, a reduced ping becomes a gamer’s best friend. On the contrary, a high ping becomes a gamer's worst enemy. Your ping time can literally be the difference between winning and losing. So how can you reduce your game ping? Before connecting to game, make sure to check your ping beforehand. Using the RIPDELAY Ping Test is one of the best methods to do so. Pings that are less than 100ms are ideal for online gamers. However, pings higher than 150ms will start to show lag. Even if you have the best gaming rig in town, that won't help in reducing your ping unless you have a very strong internet connection. And surprisingly enough, sometimes even a strong internet connection isn’t the solution to your ping problems. Reducing your ping can be done in several ways. First is to make sure that you use a wired internet connection. Using a wireless connection may result in a lot of ping problems, which is why a wired connection is the best option when it comes to online gaming. You should also consider using your local servers or the servers that are closest to your location. This can dramatically reduce your ping as it will allow better communication between the gaming server to your PC. Next is to close all running applications running in the background. This will prevent your computer from multitasking. Having many running applications will consume your computer's memory and will affect the overall performance of your gameplay. Moreover, you should close all software that demands bandwidth, as it leeches all your bandwidth and will give you a terrible amount of delays and high ping times. You should also consider disabling your software updates before you start playing, as updates tend to consume a lot of bandwidth. You may just turn your updates back on after playing. If you are using a wireless connection, make sure to reduce the number of devices that are connected to the WiFi. If it's possible, disconnect all other connected devices on your local network so that you're the only one consuming the bandwidth. If not, the next best thing is to connect your PC to the router through an ethernet cable. Routers and modems tend to work non-stop which results to congested data registry. You should try restarting your router to refresh your connection and potentially lower your ping. If your router has been around since the stone age, you might want to consider buying a newer replacement. Replacing your router will noticeably affect your Internet connection speed, strength, and consistency. Furthermore, your ping will also likely be lower when you install a new router. You can also dramatically reduce your ping by using a dedicated gaming software. RIPDELAY can lower your ping by reducing the number of hops it takes to get to your gaming server. By decreasing the number of hops between you and the game server, you'll surely see a significant reduction with your ping and have a much, much better online gaming experience! The advantage of RIPDELAY is that you aren’t limited to a single internet connection between you and the game router. Instead, RIPDELAY gives you thousands and thousands of potential alternative routes between you and the game server, giving you a multitude of options and choices for improving your connection! With such a powerful utility, we encourage our users to experiment with different connection routes to find the path that’s best for them and their favorite game.