I get 150-200 ping in Mat-Su area using Starlink. My internet speed is fine but the server locations cause high ping. Does getting a VPN closer to the server location help with gaming or does that make no sense?
Just pick different servers, a VPN will not help you combat distance, it will generally only add lag.
That said, 150-200 is unusually high, where are you playing server wise?
Other commenters are not entirely correct. GCI has had intermittent routing issues specifically to the LOL servers in Chicago over the past several years.
A vpn has been able to solve this for me when these issues do occur, as it fixed the “bad pathing”.
Since your on starlink, IDK if this will hold true but vpns are very cheap and some offer free trials. Worth a shot if you ask me. Try this one maybe: https://haste-913349.webflow.io/
No sense. It just adds another stop for the data. VPNs will.never be faster than no VPNs
So how a VPN works is it sends the signal to the VPN server, that then sends the signal to its destination, which responds, and sends its response to the VPN which then forwards the response to you.
The displayed latency may go down, but the actual latency will go up.
if anything it would increase your ping further
I have two semi-professional MMO gamers in my household. I’m just a normal player. Our favorite MMO game has a server in Texas. They also host a European community, on a Berlin server that myself and one of the other two also use.
Our Alaskan ping - is just a drop in the bucket compared to what Australians put up with in the game I play. If you really want to know what truly changes ping in a game - seek out the Australians playing the game you are using. Listen to what works for them. They would trade a left nut for a ping under 250.
That you mention nothing about your computer - tells me that is part of your issue. In my household - Every year one of them drops big $$$$ a new DESKTOP computer with top mobo, cpu, video cards and maxed out memory. Next year the other one drops the big $$$$$. (I get the leftovers, which is fine by me, LOL) If your computer is not top end - VPN is not going to help.
First thing - go to the GCI speed test and take a pic of your Alaskan speed. Is this the speed you are paying for? (For GCI Red anything close or above 1GPS is fine. If the answer is no - go remove everything off your internet - fire sticks, other computers, extenders, and switches. Do the speed test. If you are still having issues - remove the test computer and connect what ever is the newest. Try again. (Why? We had a wireless router that was pulling our GCI cable modem down to 200mbps. Once that got fixed, we discovered something was capping us at 490mbps - turned out to be the mobo LAN - installing a $15 Intel 5GBPS NIC card brought up over 1GBPS)
Next, visit speakeasyspeedtest.com and look at your speeds at different cities. Pick cities closest to the game server.
VPN info. Your game information is chopped up into data packets. Data packets are like a sealed box in the mail - it has a ‘to’ address, a ‘from’ address, and a ‘check sum’ number that in not unlike the box’s weight. Every time your data packet passes a major hub the ‘to’, ‘from’ are read and the packet ‘weight’ checked to make sure they are all there. Your packet information is read everyplace it goes. There will always be 4 reads, one way - leaving your house, entering the network, leaving the network, entering the game server. If your game server is in Seattle - Seattle is not far - that will be 4 reads to and 4 back for 8.
What a VPN does: it set up a read point when you enter the network and then computes a VPN exit point close to your desired server. If your game is in Seattle, no VPN is 8 reads round trip. VPN will also be 8 reads round trip. No help. Now, let’s say the server you need is in Miami - that will be about 12 reads to and 12 back for 24 reads. Use a good VPN like North that will connect your data to a Maimi hub, and you get 8 reads. This might be enough of a difference to be noticeable. (Me, I don’t bother with VPN to Texas. For Berlin - it does make enough of a difference in PvP.)
Still, you can forget all that - go find some Aussie players and ask how they are making it work for them!!! Compared to them - our ping rates amateur.
I think league is based in Chicago. Maybe moving here is a good excuse to quit
It was a decade ago or more, but I have used a VPN to fix bad pathing back in the day, but have not had issues in the last many years.
Still can’t speak to LOL specifically though, maybe GCI has really bad routing to there.
On league I got from 80-120 Ms is not consistent and it kinda sucks but it is what is, I live Big Lake
With MTA I get constant 80 ms
Cant speak to league, but that is way high ping in general, I live further north, and I can usually get about 150 at the worst all the way to the east coast, much less the midwest.
I used to run a gaming server out of Denver, because the ping was great to there for friends on both ends of the country, and well under 100 from here, usually under 70-80.
Yeah I don’t know how it works except the practical lag goes up
I’m in Wasilla and it’s hard to justify $90/m Starlink vs anything else. Gonna move my router/satellite around a bit and hope that improves things a little
Yeah, I have both since I’m in a different setup, with starlink I don’t think I could get high rank compared to MTA, but still playable enough til like diamond 2 or something like that, still annoying tho lol