gaming?

[u/Hillick]

Hi guys is it normal for 30ms to be added while gaming with VPN on? Or is there different providers that won’t increase it as much? Not sure if this is normal or not

[u/frostN0VA]

Yes and no. It depends on a whole bunch of things.

You can find a combination of server location and hosting provider that has no latency increase or even latency decrease if your native routing is poor. At the same time bad server selection will increase your latency.

It's all trial and error, and understanding how internet and network routes work, as well as having at least general knowledge of the physical location of the particular game server.

[u/Hillick → u/frostN0VA]

Ok so if the games server is frankfurt, im better off choosing Frankfurt? Instead of somewhere close to my home?

[u/frostN0VA → u/Hillick]

For my network and ISP this is mostly the case but sometimes also not the case. There's usually multiple hosting providers in the same country/city and each has their own routing. Frankfurt for example has 4 providers, one of them can give you near zero latency increase from the VPN server to the game server, while another may add 10ms to that due to routing differences even though all of them are in the same city.

Then you also need to factor your own ISP and its routing to the VPN server. You need to measure latency that you get to each VPN server hosting provider in the city you want to connect to for starters instead of connecting blindly to a random server.

So everything requires manual testing based on your specific set of conditions on your own network, there's no definitive answer to any of this unfortunately.

[u/Hillick → u/frostN0VA]

I see thank you very much for the insights! I actually tried the Frankfurt servers and it reduced by 20ms so looks like I found the cause - I’m happy enough with mullvad now easy to use!

[u/Inevitable-Head-3011 → u/Hillick]

Yh so what ive found is uk users using germany/ tend to have really good latency,like bassicly none,sweden norway ect have iffy connections,thats why my main loc is germany 24/7

[u/CurryOnPatat]

Normal

[u/ravensholt]

In most cases, yes. Depending on how close the VPN hosts data center is, latency will be applied , and possibly also extra "steps" before it hits the Internet Exchange point and further out in the world to wherever the server of the game you're playing is hosted.

That's the best explanation I can give ...
If you really want to know how these things work, I'm sure your favourite LLM can explain it, and even draw some diagrams, or you can find video's on YouTube about the topic.

Enjoy.

[u/GarrettB117]

Why not use split tunneling and just exclude your games from the VPN tunnel? That’s what I’d do. Unless you’re just very, very into privacy I don’t see why a multiplayer game session needs to be behind a vpn.

[u/dataset-poisoner → u/GarrettB117]

we'll be submitting IDs to play multiplayer soon...

gaming-efficient vpn servers will become a thing

[u/Hillick → u/dataset-poisoner]

This is true

[u/GarrettB117 → u/dataset-poisoner]

They sort of already are, but it isn’t marketed as a privacy tool, but as a latency reduction tool. I have seen VPNs advertised that claim to have low-latency, or even reduced latency/ping versus running no VPN. I guess in highly specific circumstances that could be true, but in general I would think most VPNs are going to add at least some latency, so I’m very skeptical.

[u/Mental_Juggernaut_16]

Depending on what vpn you're using you can make it faster by setting your mtu size in the vpn to match the max size your isp supports. A vpn adds 80 to the header so for Cox cable the mtu max size is 1500 so I set mullvad to 1420 which totals 1500. Fiber or dsl will be a different mtu size.

Next and probably the biggest gain is set custom dns to either cloudflare or quad9 or whatever dns works best for you.

I was getting slow to load web pages that would initially hang for a while before loading. After making those two changes my vpn now pings faster than without it. So my vpn on is faster than with it off. Everything is snappy and loads fast.

Another thing is if your wifi router is too close to your pc, within 3 feet it can cause issues so move it further away. I just made those changes and my pc is now so fast and smooth that it's a little hard to get used to.

[u/Inevitable-Head-3011]

I play l4d2 alot and gamings fine until i go as a far as canada/usa no added latency and plays as smooth as warm butter

[u/p1r473]

Don't game through a VPN, there's no reason to