Alright, I’m about to smash my router with a hammer. I play a lot of Valorant and Apex, but every single match is just a rubberbanding festival. My ping will be at a smooth 30ms, and then out of nowhere — BOOM — 400ms lag spike right during a gunfight. I’m on Wi-Fi because the router is in the hallway and my desk is in my room, so I can’t run a 50-foot cord across the floor without my roommates tripping and killing me. Is modern Wi-Fi really just this trash for gaming, or am I doing something completely wrong? I pay for 200 Mbps, so this shouldn’t be happening. Help.
Frankly, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are performing quite well these days, but you’re likely really bothered by local interference. If you live in an apartment building or near neighbors, everyone’s routers are constantly interrupting each other on the same channels. Get a Wi-Fi analyzer program, like NetSpot, on your laptop. The app will show you a table of all nearby Wi-Fi networks. With NetSpot, you can see if your router is using a congested channel. If so, simply go to the router settings, switch to a better channel, and your latency spikes may literally disappear. The test will take about 5 minutes.
Welcome to the club. Rule #1 of competitive gaming: never, ever play on Wi-Fi. 200 Mbps means nothing for gaming. Games don’t care about your download speed; they care about stability. Wi-Fi drops packets constantly because a wall, a microwave, or even someone walking by can disrupt the signal. If you can’t run a physical Ethernet cable, look into Powerline adapters or MoCA. Otherwise, get used to losing.
Big agree on checking the channels.
@ED_Sniper Yo, I just downloaded NetSpot and ran the scan. Holy crap, you weren’t kidding.