how to reduce ping / latency with 5g home internet

jthrill wrote:

hey! I just got the service and the download and upload speed are working great.

unfortunately, I'm not about to game anymore because of the latency / ping. the ping on my speed test usually reads about 50-60ms but once I'm in game it’s around 120 and has a lot of lag. 

I was wondering if there’s any way to reduce lag / latency? maybe connecting a high-speed gaming router? is that possible? does a 5ghz network help? 

thank you so much for any help!!!!

There's a few options, if your gaming on a pc utilizing windows operating system. You'll have to download TCPOptimizer which will change some windows settings that will improve download/upload and ping. Some reason 5G doesn't work well with windows. I noticed this when my apple/android devices were around 20 Ping but my computer was around 60. So do a speed test on your phone and check. The optimizer doubled my download and upload speeds while lowering my ping substantially. T-Mobile claims it's possible to get as low as  5-10 Ping depending on time of day and location to your tower. So another option you can consider but might only be necessary if your distant to your tower is an external antenna that will boost your signal. Also make sure your PCs network card can handle high speeds, some cap out at around 100download.

Not really much you can do without getting a more optimal route, or picking a host with a better route.

Make a note of where it is hosted and compare that to where you are testing.  Speed tests typically try to pick locations that will render more optimal results--usually fairly close to you.  A test to Charlotte from South Carolina should look considerably different against a server in Southern California.

See if you can pick a testing site that better represents where the game in question is hosted.  For example, for the Destiny franchise, they require a persistent connection to their servers in the Seattle, WA area.  A big chunk of their traffic peers through Level3/CenturyLink up there...  so you could test to CenturyLink in Seattle for a comparison to those connections (note they also use cloud hosting (like AWS and such), as well as player-direct transfers).  Blizzard hosts in multiple locations... change to test to where you typically connect if this is one of their games.

If the results are considerably different when testing like that, pass those details on to support to see if they can investigate potential routing issues.

Alternatively, you could try the VPN approach.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it makes things worse.  Just be aware that VPN's will be encrypting data and also reduce how much data goes in each packet (reduced MTU values), so they will negatively impact throughput to varying degrees.

TMobile's v4/v6/v4 encapsulation scheme functions like a VPN in this regard as well (reduces MTU from the usual1492 or 1500 value to 1420).  So you may need to tweak a VPN's config to compensate for this reduction in order to even connect (may have to force the VPN's MTU to under 1420, or if they use MSS to under 1380). 

If you are using a console, may want to look into a manual network configuration to see if you can force a static MTU value.  For example, my PS4 seems more stable when I just lock it to 1408 instead of it trying to find the best MTU every time it reaches out (iDK if you can do this on other consoles, just something I've always done with our PS3/4's).

I have the brand new rectangle box with USB-C power. And I get good speeds. 100/30 most of the time. But the ping on xbox is always close to 100 and higher. I think it's because I have no ability to open ports/enable UPnP on the gateway. T-Mobile support wasn't very helpful. Seems this is more built to get cheap high speed internet but not for gaming/video conferencing. I have the verizon home 5g internet as well and I get close to 700 down and great ping but the downside is their gateway has to attach to my window and blocks my nice view which drives me crazy.

You'll probably get the least lag if you connect your gaming PC via an ethernet cable instead of wifi. Also, if you have several wifi devices, connecting them to a router instead of directly to the gateway will reduce device contention as the gateway doesn't implement prioritization of service.

petrov2008 wrote:

@richardoswald My results def look a bit less all over the place? I shared the results below.  But

To answer your question, it made a huge difference in gaming, significant.  Games were literally unplayable.  Before, I used to see notifications in certain games that my internet ping was a huge issue, lag, etc.  Red/Yellow notice, now I get none of those notices playing the same games.  There was an article for gaming settings and TCPOptimizer and I used what it recommended.  Let me look for it. Edit: Found it -  https://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

Here are my results btw. https://testmy.net/latency?gID=n8zrox75yk

Cheers.

Is there any way you can post a screenshot of your settings? That's page sent me on a world of confusion lol

@Jeremy e OMG thank you!!  TCPOptimizer is the solution I needed!

petrov2008 wrote:

@Jeremy e OMG thank you!!  TCPOptimizer is the solution I needed!

Did this really solve your issue? I tried using optimal settings in TCPOptimizer and it didn't seem to make a difference for me. My issue is not so much high latency, it's inconsistent latency.

Two questions I have:

1. Is your latency pretty consistent compared to mine? (see my testmy.net results here: https://testmy.net/latency?gID=v4pfle33ap
2. What settings did you use w/ TCPOptimizer if you don’t mind sharing?

@richardoswald My results def look a bit less all over the place? I shared the results below.  But

To answer your question, it made a huge difference in gaming, significant.  Games were literally unplayable.  Before, I used to see notifications in certain games that my internet ping was a huge issue, lag, etc.  Red/Yellow notice, now I get none of those notices playing the same games.  There was an article for gaming settings and TCPOptimizer and I used what it recommended.  Let me look for it. Edit: Found it -  https://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

Here are my results btw. https://testmy.net/latency?gID=n8zrox75yk

Cheers.

jthrill wrote:

hey! I just got the service and the download and upload speed are working great.

unfortunately, I'm not about to game anymore because of the latency / ping. the ping on my speed test usually reads about 50-60ms but once I'm in game it’s around 120 and has a lot of lag. 

I was wondering if there’s any way to reduce lag / latency? maybe connecting a high-speed gaming router? is that possible? does a 5ghz network help? 

thank you so much for any help!!!!

Well customer service is a joke it worked amazing for 1 month for me now 1yr later been on waiting list for new modem since January a year almost. Spoke to Joe an executive an as always more excuses.  Now I live in a bad signal area is the newest one . It's all bull . If you are new don't keep it  Elon musk is where to go for internet.

I'm currently getting 300-400+ms pings with my black rectangle TMobile router.  The speeds are super variable as well, ranging from 3-30 down and 3-30 up.  I get better connectivity using my cellphone on TMobile than the router does.  I've talked with TMO support a couple of times, and they updated the address on the device (it was set to my old address for some reason).  It helped with up/download speeds I'm not getting what I should and the ping response time hasn't changed.  We have quite a few devices on the network - cell phones, laptops, smart home devices but I've never had a problem with the same kind of usage with other ISPs.  I can't simply use software to correct the issue since it applies to several devices, and my work machine which I'm not an admin.  I also have problems using my VPN with this service - I've talked with TechSupport at work and they installed Global Protect instead of using the built in Win11 VPN, but its super flaky at best given the inconsistencies with the network. Any thoughts / ideas would be a great help!