High ping when gaming with VPN

[rangin94]

Hello. I'm currently in Germany as an exchange student, and the dorms I'm living in have some ports blocked to avoid people downloading illegal stuff. The IT guy told me that unfortunately games don't work cause of the port blocks, and he told me that I could play games with a VPN. Searched a little bit for a VPN recommended for gaming and bought a month for IPVanish. Speed doesn't fall a lot when comparing speedtest on using VPN vs not using it, so I guess it's good. But, when playing games I have high ping, or I get good ping but high ping spikes which make it unplayable. Unfortunately since I was never able to play without VPN, I can't compare pings to when not using it. Does anyone know a solution to high pings when using VPN, or any recommendations when using it for gaming? A few extra details: I'm living in Munich and using a server in Frankfurt. Using an OpenVPN(TCP) connection on port 443.
Thank you

 

[nigelivey]

There is no solution you are routing all your traffic through the VPN, it's not in your control 🙁

 

[rhysiam]

So that's the fundamental difference between bandwidth (how much data you can receive (or send) in a given space of time), and latency (how long it takes for a single packet to reach its destination and be returned).

It seems like IPVanish is US-Based, though I don't know where their servers are physically located. But wherever they are, ever packet you send has to get routed all the way to their servers before starting its journey to its actual destination (the gaming server), before reversing the process on the way back.

While the VPN server will be adding some latency itself, most of it will be coming from the intercontinental round trip and all the internet routers that path will take it through. If you can find a local VPN provider in Germany you might have a better chance. Some consumer routers also offer a VPN server function. Do you have a friend in Germany somewhere with a solid internet connection who would be prepared to set up a VPN server on their router and allow you to connect?

You're still going to see some increase in latency on any VPN, but it very well could get you down to perfectly playable latency.

 

[rangin94]

So that's the fundamental difference between bandwidth (how much data you can receive (or send) in a given space of time), and latency (how long it takes for a single packet to reach its destination and be returned).

It seems like IPVanish is US-Based, though I don't know where their servers are physically located. But wherever they are, ever packet you send has to get routed all the way to their servers before starting its journey to its actual destination (the gaming server), before reversing the process on the way back.

While the VPN server will be adding some latency itself, most of it will be coming from the intercontinental round trip and all the internet routers that path will take it through. If you can find a local VPN provider in Germany you might have a better chance. Some consumer routers also offer a VPN server function. Do you have a friend in Germany somewhere with a solid internet connection who would be prepared to set up a VPN server on their router and allow you to connect?

You're still going to see some increase in latency on any VPN, but it very well could get you down to perfectly playable latency.

Since I'm new here, I don't have any friends yet who could help me do that. How did you know IPVanish was US-based? That way I can try to find one with their servers near Germany or at least in the EU. Didn't take that into consideration when trying one.

 

[bill001g]

IPvanish does have server in geramny I thought. Most the larger VPN providers have servers in most the major countries. This is one of the uses of a VPN to make it appear you are in another country, many times to get past restrictions on what video you are allowed to watch.

VPN by itself does not add a great deal of latency it mostly depends on the relationship of the vpn server location to both your location and the game server location. If for example the game server was in a building across the street and you picked a VPN locatioin say in austrilia you would have to go all the way to austrlia via vpn. Then come all the way back to the game server over a normal connection. That would add a lot of latency. If though you picked a vpn service in a city nearby it would still have to go all the way to that city and come back the increase would not be as big.

You may just want to try a number of different vpn servers in different countries and see if any work better.

There are actually vpn companies that are designed to improve performance in games. Now this is only partially true but they do tend to make sure they have their vpn nodes located in the same cites and many game companies have serves. They also have connections to many major ISP so they tend have good connectivity and in some cases if you are on a smaller ISP they may have better connectivity.

Still the VPN provider you have should have enough locations for you to try that it should be able to find a ok connection to a game server.

 

[rangin94]

IPvanish does have server in geramny I thought. Most the larger VPN providers have servers in most the major countries. This is one of the uses of a VPN to make it appear you are in another country, many times to get past restrictions on what video you are allowed to watch.

VPN by itself does not add a great deal of latency it mostly depends on the relationship of the vpn server location to both your location and the game server location. If for example the game server was in a building across the street and you picked a VPN locatioin say in austrilia you would have to go all the way to austrlia via vpn. Then come all the way back to the game server over a normal connection. That would add a lot of latency. If though you picked a vpn service in a city nearby it would still have to go all the way to that city and come back the increase would not be as big.

You may just want to try a number of different vpn servers in different countries and see if any work better.

There are actually vpn companies that are designed to improve performance in games. Now this is only partially true but they do tend to make sure they have their vpn nodes located in the same cites and many game companies have serves. They also have connections to many major ISP so they tend have good connectivity and in some cases if you are on a smaller ISP they may have better connectivity.

Still the VPN provider you have should have enough locations for you to try that it should be able to find a ok connection to a game server.

Yeah, there's servers in Germany in this VPN. When trying to play, there are times where I can play with no ping spikes at all, other times when there's a lot of ping spikes, and other times when it is unplayable. So I'm not sure what could be wrong

 

[bill001g]

I would suspect it is the connection between your location and the vpn server. The connection between the VPN server site and the game server ISP should be on extremely large and stable connections. You might get lucky and different server location in a nearby country may work better.

It is not simple to test though when you have a restricted connection and the VPN itself may make it hard also. If you have another device and can issue ping to some common address like 8.8.8.8 you should be able to see if you have issue going to that ip at the same time the game has a problem.

Also check the cpu utlization on your machine. VPN,especially openvpn, is cpu intensive and may fight with your game for cpu.