This year is going to be massive for gaming fans.
In February alone, we’ve got our hands on an intense new FPS experience in CrossfireX and the western release of a hit MMORPG in Lost Ark via Amazon Game Studios, with the highly anticipated release of FromSoftware's Elden Ring and the massively hyped Destiny 2: The Witch Queen expansion coming later in the month. There’s a litany of other huge titles set for release later in 2022, so there’s plenty for all kinds of gamers to be excited about right now.
With modern games becoming increasingly sensitive to internet quality due to their long download times and the negative experience of lag and desync in multiplayer titles, we thought we’d put together a list of 5 things you can do to get your internet connection ‘Game Ready’ for 2022.
1. Run Ethernet to your gaming devices
Wireless internet is the future when it comes to connecting people’s homes, but Ethernet is still king when it comes to connecting latency sensitive gaming devices within your home.
There are a number of things that can disrupt the signal between your router and a device when you are connecting over WiFi (walls, microwaves, and smart home devices to name a few).
If you’ve got a high-performance router that’s in the same room as the device you’re gaming on, you might not notice much difference between playing over WiFi or Ethernet. But if your router is already in the same room, you should probably just connect it to your device — a device connected to your router by Ethernet will always have a faster and more consistent connection than over WiFi.
2. Check your plan
Today’s multiplayer games tend to consume more data than those of old, so the negative impacts of a slow connection can be more noticeable while playing newer games. They’re also updated more regularly, and those updates are way more data-hungry than they used to be.
Nowadays, with the popularity of streaming services and other online entertainment platforms surging, gamers find themselves competing for bandwidth that may have been totally uncontested just a few years ago. Gone are the days when the gamer of the house had free reign over the internet while everyone else settled down to watch a DVD from Blockbuster.
If you live with other people who use the internet, you might want to consider a connection capable of supporting multiple high-bandwidth activities. It’s also worth talking to your internet service provider about how their network is set up. Some national providers are set up to reroute WA traffic through Sydney and then back to Asia instead of going direct which can result in higher latency and a poor gameplay experience. You don’t get that with Pentanet because our network traffic is optimised specifically for WA gamers.
Our friendly team are always happy to answer any questions you have about your plan and whether it’s the right fit for your needs, give us a call on (08) 9466 2670 or email [email protected] to get in touch.
3. Ensure that your router is up to the task
There’s nothing worse than being sent back to the menu screen during a game-deciding 1v1, all because your ancient router decided to throw a hissy-fit and drop your connection.
You might have the best internet connection money can buy with blazing fast and consistent speeds, but none of that matters if you don’t have a router capable of passing that connection on to your devices.
If you’re not getting the quality of connection you should be getting on paper, your router could be what’s holding you back.
4. Optimise your WiFi
If you have no other choice but to game over WiFi, there are a couple of things you can do to see that you’re milking the best connection possible from your router.
This first is to always ensure that you are gaming on your 5GHz WiFi band and never on 2.4GHz. The 2.4GHz band can carry a WiFi signal farther and penetrate walls and other obstructions more effectively but offers a much slower connection when compared to 5GHz, with significantly more latency.
The second is to check which WiFi channel your router is defaulting to. This can be checked in your router settings and while the automatic setting will be your best option 90% of the time, there are some circumstances where manually switching to a less contested band can be beneficial.
Finally, if you suspect that network interference is to blame for issues with your WiFi, narrowing your 5GHz channel width may help to ease its impact. WiFi channels are allotted a 20MHz segment within the frequency band they operate in, but these can be bonded together to form wider segments of 40 or 80MHz.
Wider WiFi channels can transfer more data but are also more susceptible to inconsistency and interference. For gaming on 5GHz WiFi, a 40MHz channel width offers a good balance of speed and low interference and that’s what we usually recommend.
If all that talk about GHz and MHz made you want to put your face in a toaster, be sure to check out our WiFi setup service! Curious about our Wi-Fi setup service? You can learn all about the man behind it right here.
5. Register for a neXus connection
Sure, we’re biased on this one, but give us a chance to explain.
For those connected to the internet through fixed wireless and less reliable fixed-line technologies like FTTN or FTTC, the 60GHz wireless frequency that neXus operates within will provide significantly better last-mile latency in most cases.
What’s more, neXus connections are gigabit capable and high bandwidth by nature, so it’s highly unlikely that a normal household is going to have any issues capping out on a neXus plan with no room to upgrade.
Perhaps the best thing about neXus for forward-thinking gamers (other than the ultra-low latency) is the assurance that the network is truly next-generation. It’s built to expand with our ever-growing need for more data in a way that traditional internet technologies simply are not.
Pentanet neXus subscribers can rest assured knowing that their connection isn’t going to be rendered obsolete when the next generation of data-hungry applications take the world by storm. In a few years time when everyone is crunching through your data watching Netflix VR in the metaverse, neXus subscribers will still have plenty of bandwidth available to frag out on Call of Duty 53 (or whatever they’re up to be then). Those relying on their providers to upgrade capacity on traditional last-mile technologies may not be so lucky.
Learn more about neXus and join our community defence force against ordinary internet in Perth for your chance to receive early access and exclusive rewards.
