How to Improve Ping in Fortnite
If you enjoy playing Fortnite, you may have noticed that your ping can sometimes become unstable or exceptionally high. As this problem has several possible causes, this article presents several solutions you can try to fix the problem.
Table of Contents
How high or low is the ideal ping?
Ping can be quantified in different ways. Normally, it is measured in milliseconds (ms) and should ideally remain below 60 if you play Fortnite online. Anything above a ping of 80 will cause various problems, such as glitches and lag.
Basically, your “ideal” ping should always be as low as possible.
What options are there for reducing ping in Fortnite?
Of the often-used methods for reducing your ping, the most common are checking your Internet connection, connecting your PC or console to the Internet via cable instead of Wi-Fi, employing a VPN and changing the configuration of default DNS servers. Your router or the location of your router can also sometimes be responsible for a high ping.
Check your internet connection
First off, use a tool to check your internet connection to ensure your high ping isn’t being directly triggered by a poor internet connection, or at least to get a general indication of what is causing high ping while playing Fortnite.
In our articles about optimizing ping, we explain how this works on different consoles and platforms such as:
Connect console or PC via cable instead of WLAN
Try simply connecting your device directly to the router with an Ethernet cable. Often, weak Wi-Fi connections are responsible for poor ping in Fortnite, especially if you are far away from the router or have thick walls in your home.
If your console or PC isn’t close enough to the router to connect via Ethernet cable or there are no Ethernet cables in your house, a powerline adapter is your next best option.
Make use of a VPN client
A VPN connection can sometimes help you reduce or stabilize ping, as data is sometimes routed more directly to the game server this way. You can easily download our VPN Client on PC, Mac OS, iOS and Android, and have it ready to go in just a few clicks.
Console gamers can also try out the VPN trick thanks to our Shellfire Box, even though PlayStation and Xbox don’t have in-built VPN support. We’ll show you how easy it is in the following video:
Click here to find out more about the Shellfire Box.
Change your DNS server configuration
If the VPN method doesn’t work or you prefer not to use a VPN, you can try to change the DNS server.
On PlayStation, for example, you can do this via Network > Configure Internet Connection. On the other hand, with Xbox you have to navigate to the “Settings” -? “Network” > “Advanced Settings”. This article describes how this works on the PC.
The following DNS servers may be helpful to try:
- OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
- Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
- IBM Quad9: 9.9.9.9
- Google: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
If changing the DNS server does not reduce or stabilize the ping in Fortnite, there is nothing stopping you from resetting the settings to the default value afterwards.
Play on closer servers
Sometimes high ping is simply due to the fact that your physical location is too far from the server you are playing on. In this case, try to find servers that are geographically nearer to you if possible.
Conclusion
In this article, we have given you some starting points to help improve your ping while playing Fortnite. If any of these tips helped you, feel free to comment and share this article with your fellow Fortnite players.
Featured image: jjfarquitectos / 123RF
