If you’re serious about online gaming, you know that Ping and Packet Loss are key to a smooth playable experience. If you are playing on a mobile device you have no doubt experienced both of these issues playing over your home wifi. In this article we’re going to have a look at how you can get the best experience using your home wifi network.

Let’s start at the source, your ISP. If the signal they are sending into your home is already unreliable, then you really have nothing to work with. You can complain and have them see about bringing it up to snuff, or you can change ISP’s for one with a consistently reliable service. 9 times out of ten though, it won’t be your ISP that is causing your game to slow down, skip frames, freeze, or lose your connection to the server entirely.

First thing you need to do is investigate what devices are on your home Wifi. What brand and model is your Wifi router? What phones, tablets and computers are connected via Wifi? And the users of these devices, what do they tend to use the Wifi for? Streaming movies, using social media, YouTube or Spotify? You need to know who your high-bandwidth users are, and when they tend to be at home and joined up, so you can potentially play when they aren’t online,

When it comes to Wifi routers, they are not all created equally. Research yours and find out how many Wifi devices it can reliably serve at one time before packets and connections start dropping. As well, you may not be aware that the slowest Wifi device on your network dictates the speed that everyone’s device will run at. So, if your router supports multiple bands, like B, G, N, but mixes these devices on the same network, and an older B or G band joins, well you all get to run at that speed. Not cool.

If your router will support more than one Wifi network, you can set one up just for your use so that you can be assured that you are getting the most out of your device. Some routers have great built in controls that you can set to make sure your device always gets priority access to the bandwidth over any other devices that are connected. Most of the time no one else will notice, but your experience will be better when you are gaming.

Where is your router in the house, and where are you typically situated when you game? If you are on the other side of the house, the distance from the router can affect your signal strength. As well, any sources of interference between you and the router can cause your experience to degrade as well. So be mindful of this, and if possible play nearer to the router.

So there you go folks. Maximizing your Wifi to get the best gaming performance you can will go a long way to improving your whole mobile gaming experience. Learn what kind of router you have, and what tools and utilities it offers that can be of help, as well as what bands and how many concurrent users it can reliably support. Identify your high bandwidth users, what devices they are using, and play when they aren’t online if possible. Play as physically close to the router as you can to minimize any interference, and to be sure you have the strongest signal possible.

As always if you would like me to look over your wifi situation and see what we can do about getting you a better gaming experience, call me and we’ll set up a time that works for you.