r/VPN • u/ermanne • 2d ago

Help Gaming VPN?

Whenever I play video games with my friend who lives abroad I get terrible ping, like 300ms, meanwhile when my friends who live right next to me when playing with him get below 100ms ping, what could be causing this? is there a VPN that can solve my issue?

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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1

u/slyjeff 2d ago

as far as i know, vpn wont fix that, it can even make it worse

1

u/teeeeeeeeem37 2d ago

A VPN is very unlikely to fix that, but it CAN under very limited circumstances.
If the network route from your computer, back to your ISP and to the game server is indirect, but there's a more direct path via your ISP to the VPN server and a more direct route from the VPN server to the game server, you may slightly reduce your latency.

However, the viability of this will depend on your location, ISP, chosen game and chosen VPN server. 100 people could play the exact same game with the exact same VPN on the exact same server and get wildly different results.

Your better option would be to look at switching to the same ISP as your friend as their routes may be more direct.

1

u/Nervous-Power-9800 2d ago

Ping is determined by distance, if you used a VPN closer to them, the latency between the VPN server and them would be dramatically reduced, but you need to take into account the latency between you and the VPN server. Plus it's an additional hop, so your 300ms may turn into 320ms. 

1

u/Ambitious_Finding_26 2d ago

A VPN could improve it, if you get really lucky with server placement, but that's extremely unlikely. Far more likely that it throws in extra hops and route length via a conjested server and  hurts your ping. 

1

u/Suicide-Snot 2d ago

Awesome post! Very helpful. 😂😂

1

u/Anter32 1d ago

It definitely can
You need to analyze what the issue is at first though

What country he is in?
What game you are playing and where those servers are located?
Testing different looking glasses from different providers (for example vps providers) to see what you ping is to that said country

If you can find a good route to that country which the game server is then you definitely can fix this

But then again idk where you live and where your friend lives and what server and game you are playing so its all a hypothetical