New 5G fixed-wireless internet services are proving to be a capable alternative to traditional cable and fiber, as evidenced by 5G’s excellent ratings in our 2023 customer satisfaction survey. But how does 5G fixed-wireless stack up when it comes to gaming?

Online gaming is the ultimate internet service test. For a good experience, gamers need a fast, stable, and responsive internet connection, and we’re happy to report that 5G delivers. In fact, many 5G home internet services come with perks that could make it preferable to other internet types for gaming in particular.

What gamers need out of their internet service

Gamers need three things above all else out of their internet connection: low latency, a reliable connection, and a good amount of data. Notice that internet speed doesn’t make the list (although 5G is fast). Gaming doesn’t take a lot of bandwidth, which are the numbers marketed to you as internet speed. It’s the more microscopic aspects of the internet connection that play a big role for gamers: how long it takes for a key press to register, how consistent the connection is over time, etc.

5G home internet and latency

Online gaming is particularly time-sensitive, making latency the most crucial internet spec for gamers. Measured in milliseconds (ms), latency is the amount of time it takes your computer to receive a response after sending out an internet signal, such as a mouse click or key press.

If you’re gaming on a connection with bad or “high” latency, you’ll experience a delay between your key presses and mouse clicks, and when you see those actions materialize in the game—this delay is known as lag. For a quality experience, gamers need an internet connection with low enough latency that this delay is either imperceptible or small enough that it doesn’t affect their performance.

Based on ISP reporting, our testing, and customer reviews and ratings, 5G fixed-wireless internet is capable of providing buttery smooth gaming experiences as a low-latency internet service. With latency measurements, the lower the better, but most gamers are comfortable with anything at 100ms and under.

T-Mobile reports very low estimated latency between 19–39ms, and Verizon estimates its 5G fixed-wireless latency to be below 30ms. This syncs up with our T-Mobile 5G Home Internet test, where we saw average latency measurements of about 18ms and an average of 3.5ms of latency jitter. Cable and fiber internet can get even lower latency readings, but all these numbers are so low that you wouldn’t notice the difference.

How reliable is 5G home internet?

Spotty internet and gaming don’t mix. Depending on the game, sessions can last an hour or even longer, and any interruption in service can result in being dropped from the game. Gamers need a consistently reliable internet service to avoid these frustrating interruptions.

One of my biggest reservations when 5G home internet started to hit the market was its reliability. If it runs on a cell tower internet signal, does the service drop in and out like cell service? Thankfully, no, it doesn’t.

With your cell phone, you’re moving around all the time, causing your internet service to deal with constant changes in reception and signal obstructions. A 5G fixed-wireless gateway will stay in a single spot in your home, allowing it to maintain a more static signal strength, which helps keep the service consistent.

In fact, 5G’s wireless nature provides an advantage when it comes to reliability. If you need to improve your signal quality, all you have to do is move the gateway to a better location in your home, no cables, technician, or appointment required. And the ISPs provide app-based tools that help you find the perfect spot.

During our home test of T-Mobile’s 5G Home Internet, service reliability was excellent with no extended outages and only minor sputters that you’re practically guaranteed to experience with any internet service.

We also asked 5G fixed-wireless customers how reliable their service was in our 2023 customer satisfaction survey. Not only did 5G keep up with cable and fiber, but it actually received higher reliability ratings than cable internet and fell just short of fiber’s reliability ratings. To back up 5G’s reliability even further, the nation’s primary 5G fixed-wireless ISPs, Verizon and T-Mobile, received the highest reliability ratings of all major providers.

What about speed?

Even though speed isn’t a primary concern for online gaming, it’s still important for other applications and could also help your game downloads and updates complete faster.

5G fixed-wireless has plans as fast as 1,000Mbps, so going with 5G doesn’t mean sacrificing speed. Just like any other service, you choose the speed that best fits your needs.

Nothing says “Time to upgrade your internet” quite like getting booted from an online game due to lag. While it might be tempting to immediately run out and get the fastest plan on the market, lag is generally caused by high latency, not low download speed. There are a lot of good choices for low-latency internet plans, but there are also a lot of other tricks you can try first to reduce your latency when playing online.

Online games can get by on low bandwidth

Playing video games has always been a hardware intensive activity. I don’t know anyone who ever had to upgrade their computer to run the upcoming version of Microsoft Word, but this was almost a right of passage for players of games like Doom and Unreal Tournament. Video games have always pushed the limits of hardware—pioneering technologies like 3D graphics, haptic feedback, and AI.

It might be surprising to those who know this history of video games and technology that even the most intense modern games don’t actually require a very fast internet connection—or at least not the kind of fast connections internet providers talk about.

Most online activities depend on moving a lot of data really fast. If you want to watch a movie on Netflix, the app has to download a high-definition (or 4K) image 30 times per second plus any associated sound. That’s a lot of data moving through your internet connection.

If you want to move a lot of data over a connection, you need bandwidth. Bandwidth (or download speed) is the capacity of a connection to carry data, usually measured in bits (or megabits, gigabits, etc.) per second. If you want your movie to playback smoothly without buffering, your connection needs to have enough capacity to keep that data flowing constantly.

In contrast, the only information your game console needs to know is what buttons the other players just pressed. You still get to experience amazing visuals and sound, but they’re generated by the console itself instead of being piped in over your internet connection (RIP Google Stadia…).

Even though the information going back and forth over your internet connection might be smaller than a single text message, it’s important that it’s able to make this journey quickly. This is where latency comes in.

Online games need low latency

Latency is the amount of time that it takes for a signal to travel from your device to a remote server, such as a game server, and back to your device. You can test your latency by sending a single “ping” of information to a remote server and timing how long it takes until that signal comes back. This is why latency is often referred to as “ping” or “ping rate.”

Connections with a faster download speed usually have lower latency, but that’s not always the case. Geosynchronous (GSO) satellite connections are notorious for their very high latency but can also have higher download speeds than other wireless plans and even wired connections like DSL.

For video games and other real-time activities, latency is much more important than bandwidth. It’s a bit like urgently ordering a new air conditioner during a heat wave. It doesn’t matter if Amazon delivers ten other packages to your doorstep every day if the specific package you’re waiting for takes two weeks to arrive.

Modern games have a lot of tricks to deal with differing amounts of latency between players and avoid lag, but if another player has been shooting at you for a full 2 seconds and the game still doesn’t know if you ducked or not, it’s going to cause problems. If your latency is just a bit too high, you might deal with sluggish controls, delayed reactions, and jerky movements. If it’s even higher, the game will likely just kick you out.

As mentioned, latency isn’t usually the focus of internet providers, so it can be difficult to troubleshoot latency issues when you have them. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to make your internet connection better for playing online games:

1. Connect via an Ethernet cable.
2. Choose the nearest game server.
3. Reduce traffic on your home network.
4. Restart your router.
5. Upgrade your router.
6. Upgrade your internet plan.

We’ll walk you through each of these steps to help you keep your online games lag-free.

Connect via Ethernet

Most of the latency in an internet connection comes from traveling the huge distances between your home and the remote server, however, some of that latency can come from the way you set up your home network. While Wi-Fi is generally pretty fast, it does take time for your router to take the signal entering your house, convert it into a wireless signal, broadcast that signal to your device, and then have your device turn it back into an electrical signal.

Even though these steps take only milliseconds, that can sometimes be too much of a delay. Additionally, if your router is set up in a less-than-ideal location, it can increase the number of data packets that are lost during transmission, further slowing down the time it takes to get information back and forth.

Using a physical ethernet cable will always be at least slightly faster than connecting over Wi-Fi, and it’s also much more stable. If you’re having issues with lag in the games you’re playing, plugging your console or computer into your router is a cheap and easy way to improve your connection.

Choose the nearest server

The biggest determiner of latency is the distance between you and the server of the game you’re playing. Most big online games will have servers set up around the world and will always connect you to the nearest one by default. You can often switch servers manually in order to play with a different pool of other players, but doing so could cause some serious lag.

This isn’t as much of a common problem as it is a facepalm moment when you realize why you’ve been dealing with lag for a couple of weeks. If the lag in your games has gotten worse, especially if the problem is in one specific game, it’s worth checking to make sure that you’re not connecting to the Asia/Pacific server when you live in Baltimore.

Reduce network traffic

Sometimes the problem with your home network isn’t your router. Well, at least not directly.

Even if you have a great internet connection, your router can still be a bottleneck for latency (and bandwidth) if your home network has more traffic than your router can deal with. Older routers can easily be overwhelmed if there are too many devices on the network demanding limited resources. If there are several other devices streaming video while you’re trying to play a game, the router might have to interrupt its connection to your console in order to send incoming data to those other devices.

Most modern routers are designed to handle lots of connected devices at the same time, but it’s still a good idea to avoid activities like downloading updates or streaming video while you’re trying to play games online.

Fix your router’s settings

If you suspect that your router is the source of your latency issues, the first step, as usual, is to reset your router by turning it off and then turning it back on again. It’s a very obvious solution, but it’s surprising how often that fixes your problem.

After you’ve tried resetting your router, there are still ways that you can improve its performance when playing online games. Many routers offer quality of service features that allow you to prioritize certain devices or programs so that they don’t get interrupted by other traffic on your network. These settings are usually accessed through your router’s admin page and will be listed under “QoS” or some similar title.

There are a few other tricks you can try to improve your home network performance. For example, if you’re in an apartment building or another densely populated area, you can change your router’s wireless channel from the admin page to reduce interference from other nearby Wi-Fi networks, though it’s usually better to just use an Ethernet cable if possible.

These small optimizations also assume that your router is working properly to begin with. If your router has problems with normal internet activity, you should troubleshoot those issues first before trying to optimize your network for gaming. If all else fails, you can try performing a full factory reset on your router, or it might just be time for a new router.

Get a better router

Routers aren’t the flashiest bits of tech on the market, but they have made some pretty big improvements in recent years. In particular, most new routers use the Wi-Fi 6 standard, which not only improved speeds, but also introduced technologies to better manage network congestion, especially in smart homes with dozens of connected devices.

There are, of course, plenty of excellent gaming routers out there designed specifically with tools to help you get the most out of online games. There are also plenty of budget options for routers which may not be the most cutting edge devices, but are still a big improvement over an old router running Wi-Fi 4 technology.

It’s important to remember that while a bad router can definitely add to your connection’s latency, a good router can’t reduce the base level of latency that comes with your internet connection. If you struggle to play online games with your current connection, upgrading to a different connection type that has lower latency is the best way to improve your online experience.

Get a better internet plan

Certain types of internet connection inherently suffer from high latency. GSO satellite is the worst offender with a minimum latency of around 600ms. Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and other types of wireless internet fare much better, but they still tend to be on the high end of latency. The lowest-latency connections are fiber, which makes sense, since the bulk of internet infrastructure is built from fiber already.

The nice thing about looking for a low-latency fiber connection is that even slower fiber plans still have incredibly low latency, so you don’t need to sign up for the most expensive multi-gigabit fiber plan to have a great setup for online gaming.

Popular fiber internet providers

If you don’t have a fiber provider in your area, cable internet is the next best choice for a low-latency connection, followed by DSL.

More resources

Looking for more information about how to get the best internet connection for playing online games? Check out these other articles from our internet experts.

• The Best Internet for Gaming
• What Is a Good Internet Speed for Gaming?
• Gaming on Satellite Internet
• Best Internet for VR Gaming and Streaming

Your gaming ping is a representation of how responsive your internet connection is. A low ping is essential for any online game that’s played in real-time: shooters, racing games, MMOs—pretty much everything except turn-based games. This guide will help you achieve the lowest ping possible so you’re not gaming one virtual step behind your competition.

What is ping?

Your ping is a measurement of your connection’s latency; the terms latency and ping are often used interchangeably. The game sends a test signal or “ping” to the gaming server and waits for the server to respond. Your ping (measured in milliseconds) measures the time between the outgoing test signal and the response from the server.

To stay competitive in real-time multiplayer gaming, you need as little delay as possible between your mouse clicks and button presses and what’s happening on your screen, and a high ping means a long delay.

When gaming with a high ping, you might notice that every time you take a shot or adjust your aim, it takes the game a little too long to complete that action. This puts you at a big disadvantage and causes immersion-breaking disorientation.

Learn your gaming ping

Most multiplayer games supply a ping measurement, often in the game’s scoreboard. Start by checking your in-game ping measurement as it targets the specific server the game is using. If you have a high ping score, you should confirm the results with a speed test ping or latency measurement.

If your ping is high in the game but low on the speed test, the problem likely originates outside of your home network. Your next step is to check your ping in a different game. If your ping is only high in one game, it may be the result of a specific gaming server and have nothing to do with your home network or internet service. You can try switching the gaming server you’re playing on if the game allows for it, but sometimes problems like these are just the internet god’s way of telling you to chill on Call of Duty for a bit and relax with something a little less latency-dependent, like Animal Crossing.

If you have high ping measurements from multiple games and a speed test, it’s worth troubleshooting your home network for latency.

What causes high ping?

The reason for your high ping fits in one of two categories: home network issues or wide-area network (WAN) issues. Home network issues that could cause high ping include Wi-Fi issues, faulty cabling, using the wrong router settings, among other things—most of which you can fix on your own.

WAN issues are tougher to solve because the issue originates outside of your home network, but there are still a few tricks you can try and ways to navigate around them. We’ll go over the best fixes for all the main causes of high ping.

Top ways to lower your ping

While some causes of high ping are out of your control, there are still several fixes you can try to get your latency woes under control.

Use an Ethernet cable

The convenience of Wi-Fi is tempting, but, for gaming, nothing beats the rock-solid stability of a hardwired connection to your router. Wi-Fi broadcasts from your router are subject to interference from a wide range of sources; it’s not always easy to fix and can lead to hours of unfruitful troubleshooting. Even worse, many Wi-Fi issues are intermittent, making it even more difficult to pin down the cause.

Using an Ethernet connection removes these potentially lag-inducing complications. Depending on where you keep your router, setting up an Ethernet connection may be inconvenient. But if you can swing it, Ethernet is easily the best setup for online gaming.

If your gaming setup is in the same room as your router, this is easily achieved by getting an Ethernet cable long enough to run along your baseboards from the router to the gaming system.

If your gaming setup is in a different room than your router, consider moving the router or gateway. How difficult this is depends on your internet service and the layout of your home network. Check out our guide on moving your router to another room for more details.

Switch to a closer gaming server

Some games let you choose the server you play on, and choosing a physically closer server can have a tremendous impact on your performance by shortening the round trip of your ping. Often, games will automatically choose the closest server, but not always. It’s worth checking, especially if you’re having lag issues.

Restart your router

A router restart often works wonders for home networking issues because it gives your router a chance to flush out any glitches or inefficient processes. Restarting your router is usually as simple as briefly disconnecting the router’s power cable or using a restart function through your router or ISP mobile app. See our router restart guide for more details.

Optimize your router settings for gaming

There are a few common router settings that can improve your gaming ping. The most notable of these is QoS, which prioritizes certain connections on your home network. With QoS prioritization set to your gaming devices, you can make sure your online gaming is always in the fast lane in your home network. If slowdowns happen or you use up all your bandwidth, the slowdowns and lag will impact your other devices before they affect your gaming.

Next, you can optimize your Wi-Fi if you’re not using an Ethernet connection. Choosing the best Wi-Fi frequency band (6 GHz is best), making sure you’re not using a crowded Wi-Fi channel, and optimal router placement can all have a big impact on performance. Lastly, do not use a Wi-Fi range extender or Wi-Fi booster if you’re after the lowest possible gaming ping. Most of these devices simply retransmit your Wi-Fi signal which doubles your latency.

Upgrade your router

A higher-quality router comes with more than a cool look. Some gaming-specific routers take QoS to a new level by allowing you to not only prioritize certain devices, but also applications within those devices. For example, you can prioritize a game’s web traffic above other background processes on your PC. Additionally, some routers have specific optimized settings that can be set for each of your games, so when you launch the game, the router automatically activates the ideal parameters for that game.

Aside from gaming-specific features, gaming routers often have top-of-the-line Ethernet and Wi-Fi components and specs. See the best gaming routers of 2024 for more information.

Wi-Fi and internet technology evolve quickly. You don’t need a new router every year, but you should periodically update your equipment if you’re expecting the kind of performance needed for top-tier online gaming.

Check for damaged cables

Cable damage is often overlooked because you usually can’t see it. Home networking cables like Ethernet and coax transmit internet signals over their copper cores, and it’s common for those copper cores to become damaged without any indication on the exterior rubber shell (the part you can see).

To identify a damaged cable, look for kinks and harsh bends in the cable. Also, take note of cables lying in an area where they are repeatedly crushed by chair wheels, foot traffic, or chewing from pets. Check the cable connectors as well. An Ethernet cable should make an audible click when inserted into an Ethernet port, and coaxial cable connectors should be snugly attached to the wall outlet and modem or gateway.

The easiest way to deal with damaged cables is to simply replace them. See our article on the best Ethernet cables if you need a replacement.

Don’t use a VPN

VPNs disguise your IP address by passing your traffic through another server. This adds an extra stop in your gaming data’s journey to the server, increasing your latency. Definitely avoid VPNs for the shortest possible ping times.

Switch to fiber or cable internet

Fiber internet provides the most responsive connections for gaming. Fiber internet signals persist longer than other connection types, requiring less amplification and processing which reduces latency. If you can’t get fiber internet, cable internet is your next best option, and the difference in latency between the two is often negligible.

Upgrade to a gaming router FAQ

There’s no shortage of great internet service providers (ISPs) in the Northwest. But, choosing an ISP specifically for gaming requires a little extra research. Details that typically go unnoticed can have a huge impact on gamers. Things like internet latency and jitter can be even more important than download speed.

Unfortunately, internet providers don’t typically give details on these important performance indicators. That’s why our team of internet experts has decided to fill in the gaps using the thousands of data points we collect daily from our internet speed test. Read on to find out which Northwest ISP is the best choice for gamers.

The table above compares providers from our Northwest speed test data sample. Ziply Fiber has a clear performance advantage over its cable internet competitors, with faster speeds and lower latency. Ziply Fiber’s averages were calculated from data targeting the brand’s fiber internet plans (Ziply Fiber also services DSL connections). Let’s break down each of these measurements to see what they mean for Northwest gamers.

Smooth gaming requires a snappy and responsive internet connection. When shopping around for internet plans, we’re used to focusing on internet bandwidth, which is marketed as download speed by ISPs. But a good gaming experience requires a different kind of speed: Low latency.

Bandwidth dictates how much data your connection can download per second, latency measures how fast internet signals come and go from your home network. More precisely, latency measures, in milliseconds, the time it takes for your network to send a signal to an internet server and receive a response.

If your internet connection has high latency, your button presses and mouse clicks will take longer to register in-game. Gamers call this delay lag. It’s always present to some degree, but on a quality internet connection, the delay is so short you can’t even tell it’s there.

Now that we’ve gone over the importance of low latency, let’s see who has the lowest latency in the Northwest.

Ziply Fiber had the lowest average latency in our Northwest speed test data sample. The results aren’t too surprising, given that Ziply Fiber’s fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) internet service has a technological advantage over the competition.

Fiber internet transmits data using light pulses, which persist longer than the electrical signals used for cable internet. Consequently, fiber-optic internet signals need less boosting and processing, which lowers latency. That’s why fiber customers typically experience a more responsive internet connection.

Low jitter makes for a smoother gaming experience. While low latency reduces the delay of your in-game actions, low jitter ensures that your connection latency remains consistent.

If your connection’s latency changes dramatically from one moment to the next, it could make your in-game experience feel choppy.

Astound pulled just ahead of Spectrum and Ziply Fiber for the best jitter score. We were happy to see good jitter scores for most ISPs all around.

Online gaming doesn’t require a ton of download speed, but you still want enough bandwidth to cover all your other activities. Fast download speeds also mean less time waiting on game downloads and updates.

Ziply Fiber takes the lead again for both download speed and upload speed. Ziply Fiber’s fiber internet network has two main advantages over cable networks. First, fiber-optic cables have more bandwidth than the coaxial cables used for cable internet, so FTTP connections, like Ziply’s, can process more data per second.

The second advantage is fiber internet’s symmetrical speeds. With most internet types, upload speeds are only a small fraction of the download speeds. But with fiber internet, the upload speeds are equally as fast as the download speeds. That’s why Ziply’s upload speeds are more than five times faster than the competition.

If you’re a streamer who broadcasts your gaming on a service like Twitch, fast upload speeds are essential. More upload bandwidth also comes in handy for video calls, sending files to the cloud, and any circumstance where you need to upload large files.

Game downloads and updates often require huge amounts of data, sometimes more than 100GB. That kind of usage can chew through a data cap in no time. When shopping for a gaming ISP, ensure you have a high data cap or, even better, get an ISP with no data cap at all.

Ziply Fiber and Spectrum include unlimited data for all their internet plans. Astound has some of the smallest data caps, starting at just 400GB, which isn’t enough monthly data for the average household. Xfinity’s 1,200GB is enough data for most customers, but we still prefer the unlimited data policies of Ziply Fiber and Spectrum.

The type of internet service you choose can impact your speeds, service reliability, and connection stability. Fiber is the best internet type for gaming due to its massive bandwidth capacity and reliability compared to the competition.

Customers definitely notice fiber’s improved performance. In our latest customer satisfaction survey, fiber internet received the top customer ratings for speed and reliability. Fiber customers also reported experiencing fewer outages than any other internet type.

Of the ISPs included in our Northwest analysis, Ziply Fiber has the most fiber coverage. Astound has some fiber availability in the region, but it’s still primarily a cable ISP.

If you can’t get fiber internet, cable or fixed wireless internet are good alternatives.

The best ISP in the Northwest for gaming is Ziply Fiber. In almost every key area, including download speeds, upload speeds, and latency, Ziply Fiber performed the best. In addition to the best overall performance, Ziply Fiber’s internet plans run over a fast and reliable FTTP network, include unlimited data, and start at just $20 per month.

Every gamer has experienced the woes of lag. You’ve got victory in the crosshairs and are about to unleash your game-winning moves; but just as you plunge down those decisive button presses, your screen bugs out in a scramble of jittery mayhem. You miss a shot that even the greenest of newbs couldn’t excuse away and lose the game. Awesome. Your connection stabilizes in time to hear a barrage of dismay from your teammates.

Latency sucks, and, unfortunately, you can’t eliminate it altogether. But with a top-notch internet connection and a little optimization, you can severely mitigate how often latency affects your gaming.

The most effective route is to upgrade to a fiber internet connection. No internet type is perfect, but fiber comes close as the fastest and most reliable internet connection you can get.

Lower latency

When discussing internet speed, it’s common to focus on bandwidth: the amount of data you can download per second. The speeds you see when you sign up for an internet plan are bandwidth speeds. But latency has the most impact on your gaming experience. Spoiler alert: fiber internet has the lowest average latency.

Latency (measured in milliseconds) is how long it takes data to travel from your computer to a server (such as a gaming server) and back. When gaming, latency affects how responsive your controls feel. If your latency is really bad, you’ll start noticing glitches and time sync issues, making it impossible to perform well.

In fact, low latency is so important that most multiplayer games include a ping reading on their scoreboards, which is a latency test to see how well your internet connection is performing in-game.

How bad is your latency?

Use our internet speed test to get a read on your internet connection’s latency and speeds.

Jitter

For silky-smooth gaming, you should also aim for low latency jitter. While latency measures how long it takes for the data to travel from one place to another, jitter represents the consistency of your latency. For example, if one command message has a latency reading of 15ms and the next has one of 150ms, that would constitute a bad jitter reading. When you have a lot of jitter, you experience the same kind of glitching and stuttering you get with high latency.

Fiber internet is best at providing low latency and low jitter. Fiber-optic cables use light pulses to transmit data, unlike cable and DSL, which use electrical signals over copper wire. Copper wire signals need more amplification and processing to cross the huge distances required when your home network transmits and receives data from the internet.

Fiber, on the other hand, is able to travel much further before requiring amplification and processing, which makes the connection faster and more stable; this translates to lower latency and jitter.

More reliable

Even worse than latency are internet drops and outages. Such occurrences mean you may spend hours in a game only to be dropped from the match as your internet connection shuts down or slows to a trickle.

Outages and slowdowns happen with every internet type and every ISP, but they happen less with fiber internet. Fiber-optic internet networks not only tend to be newer than cable or DSL networks, but there’s less processing required, which makes fiber networks more robust overall. We even found evidence of fiber’s higher reliability in our latest customer satisfaction survey, where a majority of fiber customers (73%) reported “never” or “rarely” experiencing internet outages compared to cable (53%) and DSL (49%).

More bandwidth (i.e. faster speeds)

Fiber also beats traditional internet speeds, which are often referred to as bandwidth and are measured in megabytes per second (Mbps). Almost all fiber ISPs offer at least gig speeds, and many offer multi-gig speeds.

High bandwidth isn’t a must-have for online gaming. Multiplayer games take up a very small amount of data per second—even just 5Mbps is usually more than enough. But a lot of games are delivered digitally, so you’ll have to download huge game files. Even after you download the game, most multiplayer titles often have large required updates as well. Fiber’s high speeds can make those downloads and updates go a lot quicker, which means less waiting and more gaming.

Twitch streaming and symmetrical speeds

If you stream or broadcast your gaming, you’ll definitely want fiber internet’s superior upload speeds. The internet speed numbers you see when signing up for an internet plan are the plan’s download speeds, which dictate how fast your network receives data from the internet. But certain activities, such as broadcasting a gaming stream, require more upload bandwidth.

Fiber internet has symmetrical speeds, meaning the upload speed is just as fast as the download speed. With other services, such as cable and DSL, upload speeds are much slower, usually only a small fraction of the download speeds.

How to find a fiber internet provider

It can get tricky to find all the internet providers in your area. A quick internet search often leads to sponsored results that may leave out that perfect ISP for your needs. Our zip code search tool helps you find all your local internet providers immediately. Give it a spin to find out if any fiber providers service your area.

What if there are no fiber providers in my area?

Because it requires significant infrastructure investments, many areas still don’t have access to fiber internet. Fiber optic internet is the best option for serious gamers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good gaming experience from a different type of service.

If you can’t get fiber, we recommend going with cable or 5G fixed-wireless internet, which are both capable of delivering low-latency and high-bandwidth internet connections. They are also more widely available, so there’s a very good chance you have access to one, if not both.

How to optimize your internet connection for gaming

Aside from improving your internet connection, here are a few quick changes you can make to your home network that can have a huge impact on your gaming sessions.

1. Use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi

A wired Ethernet connection is a lot more stable than Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi uses radio waves to broadcast internet signals throughout your home, which are susceptible to interference from different materials, electronic devices, and other Wi-Fi networks. This is often the cause of a jittery and glitchy gaming experience.

Using an Ethernet cable to hardwire your router directly to your computer or gaming console mitigates lag and jitter by limiting signal interference. See our guide on connecting to your network using an Ethernet cable if you’re not sure how to do this.

2. Prioritize your gaming PC or console in your router’s settings

Many routers allow you to prioritize certain devices over others. Once set, your chosen device, like your gaming machine, will get your precious bandwidth ahead of anything else. The setting is called Quality of Service (QoS), though it may appear differently in different routers. If you need help with this, check our router settings guide.

3. Don’t use a Wi-Fi extender

Sometimes you can’t avoid using Wi-Fi for your gaming, but take extra care to avoid multiplayer gaming over a Wi-Fi extender. Most Wi-Fi extenders are technically Wi-Fi repeaters, which essentially copy the signal from your router and rebroadcast it. This doubles your latency, and likely negatively impacts your network jitter level. If you’re going to game over Wi-Fi, try to connect to the router directly.

FAQ