Why CS:GO Lags? Let’s understand!

10 things that you need to know if you Lag while playing in an online gaming server

Many CSGO players face losses and chokes on Indian Valve servers and community servers. It’s like a national phenomena now. I took a deep dive into the issue and presenting you my high level findings and tips to deal with these issues.

1) Try to avoid your windows default firewall; Avast (FREE Edition) with game mode on is the best way to achieve performance without ransoming your security.

2) Don’t keep your torrent clients on; Do not download movies or pirates software; utilize your bandwidth wisely.

3) Pirated software should be always avoided; chances are good that you are part of a larger botnet if you have been downloading those game hacks lately. Get a clean system first and maintain it for gaming purpose.

4) Remove default Windows theme “AERO” , best is to go with a classic theme. I know look matters to most gamers but if you need performance, you need it let it go.

5) When you lag, do not think automatically that its the server; the chances are good that probably your net is acting up and when you speak up in the server saying “what a lag” its evidently realistic that someone out there might be facing the same issues that you are and he/she might acknowledge the same and probably you might consider server to be a bad ass. In India the bandwidth is very expensive and therefore ISP’s always collapse down on reaching bottlenecks and a large number of users gets affected. I am not saying servers do not lag but most of the times its the client and not the server in general.

6) If you lag and if you are on WiFi, don’t even complain. Cause you have no right to complain as you are trying to win a relay race with one man down. WiFi is the biggest spoiler of Indian e-Sports online servers. Please make sure you are connected on a good Ethernet port and have no interim issues.

7) If you can’t get on an Ethernet port and have to live on WiFi for some reason, please do a ping test on google to see if its your own Wifi registering the losses or the server. Here is what you can test;

Test No. 1

Go to Start > Run > cmd | hit enter and type this: Ping 8.8.8.8 -t

Wait for 30 seconds and hit Ctrl + C. Look at the time in ms. This generally should be around 25 max if you are expecting 40 to 60 ping. There should be no data packets Lost. See the status on the bottom. If its not the case your ISP/Wifi is to blamed.

Test No. 2

Go to Start > Run > cmd | hit enter and type this: Ping 192.168.1.1 -t (if your router IP is different then use that, ex: 192.168.0.1)

Wait for 30 seconds and hit Ctrl + C. Look at the time in ms. This generally should be between 0 to 3 max. If you see sudden spikes, data packet losses etc then its your WiFi to be blamed.

Most of the Indian players play on Wifi from Home and evidentally they all face the same issues. Specially those who lives in societies/apartments where there are hundreds of other WiFi signals. A weak WiFi signal causes data packet losses at random times.

8) Technically speaking, TCP/IP works in a way that allows your system on internet to identify the shortest path to reach a destination IP. It takes some times to understand that. So if you are connecting to a gaming server for the first time, or after a few days and see higher ping on a server where earlier you used to get less, probably give it some time. After some time the expectation is the TCP/IP will do its magic and your ping might settle.

9) When a team lay on LAN, multiple systems connecting on a same destination over internet using a shared network resource may be another reason. You cafe has to have above 50 Mbps of Download and the most important at least 10 Mbps of Upload speed to give you a lag/loss free experience.

10) Most of the gaming servers hosted in Data Centers have 100 Mbps of Uplink/Downlink ; These data centers also works on ISPs, the only difference is that these Data Centers in India have multiple ISPs and Load Balancing infrastructure. They also face issues at times. Time between 5 pm to 7 pm is very resource intensive and top peak time. Avoid playing a competitive match or a tourney match during that time.

Hope this info helps you. If you like to add some more information around this topic, please free to comment.

Tags: bad csgo ping chokes how to improve csgo ping losses reduce loss