This guide is for gamers who experience problems such as packet loss, high latency or game disconnects.

🕹️ Advice for Gamers #

• Please check if the problem could be with the game using Downdetector or gamer forums.
• Try playing via an Ethernet cable connection to your router (don’t use wifi).
• If you are using an old router, upgrading to a newer router can make a big difference.
• It’s a good idea to be sure your fibre line is perfectly healthy – do an 80% UDP iPerf test.
• Make sure there are no other bandwidth-intensive downloads or uploads happening.
• Read our guide about Buffer Bloat and Latency under Load.
• Find the IP of the game server – this guide has details about finding the IP.
• AI (ChatGPT / Grok) services can help find game server IPs.
• You will usually not be able to ping the game server IP, but you can use traceroute and MTR to inspect the path to the game server. The IP closest to the game server which responds is usually a good indication of the server latency.
• Some games show ‘in-game’ ping and packet loss numbers, but we can’t use these as the game companies don’t disclose how they calculate this and we would rather trust standard troubleshooting tools like MTR and traceroute.
• Check in which city the game server is located to see if the latency you are seeing makes sense. You can use a GeoIP database or ask the game company.
• Our Dashboard has a city latency map to compare city latencies. UK and EU should be around 140-150ms.
• Run an MTR test while you are playing and check if you see packet loss or extra latency when you notice a problem with the game. Read the MTR guide to learn about CoPP and how to read MTR results.
• We have a looking glass, if you want to check latency and run a traceroute or MTR test to a game server IP.
• The looking glass can give you independent views of each IP transit provider’s routing (ipt1, ipt2). Test to see which one gives you the lowest latency. We can adjust routing based on the ASN of the game company and the city in which the game is hosted.
• If both IP transit providers show packet loss to a game server IP when doing an MTR test from our looking glass, the game server side is probably congested.
• If you are noticing a very small difference in latency, it could be best to just wait and check again in a day or two.
• Test with Exitlag or a VPN to see if this gives you different results.
• If you are seeing random disconnects while an MTR test looks healthy (no packet loss or extra latency), you can try to open a support ticket with the game company to ask why this is happening.
• We have a Telegram Customer Community group where you can ask if other gamers are noticing a problem.

🔔 Opening a Gaming Support Ticket with Atomic #

• Let us know when you noticed a change in game latency or when packet loss started.
• Is only one game affected, or do you notice a problem with many of your games? Do you see a difference when you connect to servers in other cities?
• Keep an MTR or Pingplotter test running while you are playing. Make a screenshot if you notice packet loss or high latency.
• Keep a log of the days and times you notice a problem with the game.
• Please provide a comparison ping and traceroute – either via another ISP, or via a mobile (GSM) connection, or by using Exitlag, so we can see if lower latency is possible to the game server.
• We can sometimes get more direct peering set up with the network hosting the game – let us know if you think peering can be improved. Note: this can take a few days.
• Please include your theory on what’s going wrong, something like: “I think it’s congestion because since last week Wednesday I have noticed 2% packet loss between 20:00 and 22:00”.
• Email our support team to open a ticket and include the troubleshooting details above.
• Providing enough troubleshooting details can speed up the process. Simply sending us a photo of your screen showing in-game packet loss is not very helpful. We usually need to troubleshoot on a network level, so we need the correct game server IP.

Happy gaming. If you have more advice for gamer customers, please email our support team. 🚀