Question Random Disconnects When Gaming

[cm2332]

When playing PC games, I randomly disconnect at random intervals. Sometimes it is every 5 minutes, sometimes I can go for as long as I want with no issues. Doesn’t seem to be specific to a game but I also don’t have issues with other applications like youtube or any other devices on my network.

I suspect that my firewall settings could be blocking specific connections, but I have no idea how to further diagnose or correct the issue. I've already tried switching to a wired connection and I've already tried resetting my firewall settings to defaults. I am on Windows 11.

 

[bill001g]

Even extremely small outages will cause a disconnect in games. Things like youtube or netflix have large data buffers that can hide a disconnect. Things like web pages you get random delays for pretty much any reason so you don't notice as much.

Games and things like video conferencing to a point are not able to use buffers because it add delay but it also means you can not hide a small outage.

It is likely your internet is dropping data. Can be lots of things that cause it.

First test it to open a cmd window in the background and leave a constant ping command run to 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1. When you have issues in the game quickly switch over and see if you see packet loss in the ping.

You want to do all these tests on ethernet, wifi can get random packet loss which will make the test results unreliable.
If you see loss in the ping I would call the ISP and see if you get lucky. There is more testing you can do to show it is the ISP issue but if the problem is in the most common location (the cables coming to your house) the ISP tends to be able to see that easily.

Firewall issue generally will not cause a random failure. What they do is some feature will always fail or always work.
You can temporarily disable the firewall but in most cases the firewall is allowing all traffic.