Fix Your League of Legends Ping Seriously Fast

League of Legends performance is rarely ruined by high ping alone. But high ping can lead to performance issues when compounded by one or two other minor issues. Let’s take a look at where high ping comes from and see how to keep lag from ruining your games.

Bad Ping Thresholds in League of Legends

While 30ms and lower feel the best in-game, the problem really starts once you go over 80ms, which is when abilities start feeling off. But once you hit 120ms, it really starts to affect your game.

Ping is not the only problem here, though. Here are the three numbers that are really affecting LoL:

• Latency (ping): The time it takes for data to travel between your PC and the game’s server
• Jitter: How much bouncing around your ping does
• Packet loss: The percentage of data that doesn’t arrive

By pressing Ctrl + F in-game, you’ll see live ping and FPS stats. High ping is usually due to being far from the server, but the real problem is when it spikes every few seconds, which is caused by jitter or packet loss.

The 30-Second Triage Before You Touch Anything Else

Before anything else, here are four steps to take for initial troubleshooting

1. Check the game service status at status.riotgames.com.
2. Power cycle your modem and router. You’ll need to turn off and unplug both devices for at least 30 seconds before restarting them. Most lag issues can be fixed this way.
3. Close any other apps, including Discord overlay, Chrome, OBS, and anything syncing or streaming.
4. Switch to Ethernet. We’ll discuss this in more detail below.

Identifying the Source of LoL Lag

It’s important to identify the source of the problem; it could be your local machine, your home network, the ISP’s route to Riot's servers, or the server itself. The best way to start the process is to ping the Riot servers.

Open Command Prompt as admin and use the table below to ping the game’s server. If you encounter problems here, you can also use a public LoL checker, since the IPs could change. Run the test for a minute and observe the consistency of the response times.

Region	Server IP	Command
North America	104.160.131.3	ping 104.160.131.3 -t
EU West	104.160.141.3	ping 104.160.141.3 -t
EU Nordic & East	104.160.142.3	ping 104.160.142.3 -t
Korea	104.160.143.3	ping 104.160.143.3 -t
Latin America North	104.160.136.3	ping 104.160.136.3 -t
Oceania	104.160.156.1	ping 104.160.156.1 -t

Fix 1: Do Not Play on a WiFi Connection

Wireless connections and performance don’t play well together. This is because WiFi adds latency and drops packets, and the situation worsens the more devices share it. But if you just can’t have cables, here are your best options:

• Use Powerline adapters or MoCA adapters for better performance compared to WiFi
• Stay on WiFi, using the 5GHz band, and stay as close to the router as possible. You can also use a WiFi analyzer app to find the least crowded channel.

Fix 2: Free Up Your Bandwidth

Your internet connection has limited bandwidth, but your network will almost always have a bunch of things using that bandwidth. Streaming, cloud syncing, app updates, and Ring uploads to AWS all use bandwidth, which can kill your LoL ping. You need to manage this.

Open Resource Monitor on your computer by typing “resmon” in your Run dialog (Win + R), then click the Network tab to check what’s eating your bandwidth. Anything taking up hundreds of KB/s could be affecting your LoL game.

If you have QoS (Quality of Service) options, use them to ensure your gaming PC has priority during bandwidth congestion.

Fix 3: Keep Your Network Driver Updated

Outdated drivers can cause device failure, but sometimes they can just keep a device from performing optimally. For Network adapters, this can manifest in slower or unstable connectivity. To update your drivers, go to Device Manager, expand Network Adapters, right-click the Ethernet or WiFi adapter, then choose Update driver.

You can also navigate to the motherboard or laptop manufacturer’s website and get the latest network driver from there.

Fix 4: Fix Your DNS Settings

DNS is what translates a website URL into a server IP address, but the default ISP DNS is often slow or unreliable, which can cause hiccups in the game. Here are better alternatives:

• Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
• Google: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Go to Network & Internet settings, click on your active network connection, go to DNS settings, switch to manual, then enter one of the IPs above. Run “ipconfig” or “flushdns” in Command Prompt to clear your old one. This doesn’t fix the problem on its own, but it improves your overall connectivity and prevents random disconnects.

Fix 5: Renew Your IP and Reset the Stack

    ipconfig /release   
    ipconfig /renew   
    ipconfig /flushdns   
    netsh winsock reset   
        

The local network state could also get stuck at times. Open Command Prompt as admin and run the commands above in order. The last command resets your Windows networking stack, and you’ll need to reboot your computer after all these.

When the Route Itself Is the Problem

If traceroute shows that the problem is somewhere between your ISP and the Riot server, then there’s nothing you can do to fix it. But you can take a different route instead. There are two tools you can use.

Gaming Private Networks (GPNs) can route your game over more optimized paths. This will allow you to bypass slow ISP peering.

You can also use a VPN. While these are usually used for privacy, and the additional encryption usually adds ping, choosing the right VPN server location could help you find a faster path to the Riot game server.

The biggest problem is that VPNs are usually only reliable when paid, but you can check with a free option before committing. Try VPN for free and run a ping test against your region’s Riot IP. A lower number means the route is really the problem.

When None of the Standard Fixes Work

There are situations where settings cannot fix the problem, such as when the distance between the machine and the server is just too great. If you’re playing on an NA server from Australia, you’re just going to have to accept the delay. You’ve got two more options here:

1. Switch to another region. For players in Australia, an OCE or KR account would have a ping in the 30s. You can ask Riot to transfer for a fee, or you can start fresh with a new smurf account.
2. Contact your ISP and present evidence. Run “tracert” and find where the hop spikes. If the bad hop is on their side, they’ll need to fix it, but you’ll need to present screenshots as evidence.