How to Fix High Ping & Lag in Modern Warfare 3
If packet burst or unstable ping is making you lose gunfights in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, then you’re in the right place.
If you follow every step we have for you in this blog, MW3 lag and high ping will be a thing of the past. Whether you’re playing on PC, PlayStation or Xbox, these tips will massively improve your connection and gameplay.
Server Status
Before you make any changes to your network setup, it’s worth checking the status of the Call of Duty servers. The game servers can become overwhelmed during busy periods, especially if a new season or update has launched.
If the game servers are experiencing issues, this can negatively affect your connection. Issues logging in to the game servers or a sudden increase in ping on a usually stable connection are big indicators of server issues.
We have linked some sites below to check the server’s status if you are experiencing any of these issues. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about server issues until the developers issue an update or fix.
Wired Connection
Stuttering, bad hit registration and packet burst in Modern Warfare 3 are all caused by packet loss. Packet loss is very common when using a wireless (Wi-Fi) connection for gaming. Whenever possible, we recommend using a wired (Ethernet) connection to your games console or PC when playing online.
This will provide the most stable connection, which is the most important thing for gaming. The weakness in Wi-Fi, when gaming, is that the signal can be interrupted when traveling through walls/ floors to reach your console or PC. This is what causes the previously mentioned packet loss, and those annoying shoot first die first gunfights in MW3.
If your console or PC is located in another room from your router, you could use powerline adapters to achieve an ethernet connection. This piece of tech allows you to connect your PC or console to your router via ethernet, without having to run a cable across your home. They carry a connection over your home’s existing electrical wiring.
DumaOS 4
Now this is where we come in. If you take Modern Warfare 3 seriously, you’ve probably heard of DumaOS.
It’s a set of powerful tools that take your gaming connection to the next level. We’ve recently released a huge update: DumaOS 4 for the new Netduma R3 Gaming Router.
This update has made existing features more powerful and easier to use, plus new and exciting features. In this section of the blog, we’ll show you exactly what DumaOS 4 can do for your connection in Modern Warfare 3.
If your router doesn’t have DumaOS 4 yet, you can still use DumaOS 3.3 or previous versions to optimize your connection.
Geo-Filter 2.0
Geo-Filter gives you the power to control what servers you play on, every time. Add your PC or console as a device to the Geo-Filter and select Call of Duty as the game you want to filter. Once this is done, a filter radius will be created around your home location.
This filter radius will stop you connecting to far away servers outside of it. This is really important as connecting to far away servers will cause you to have a huge increase in ping, causing slow and unresponsive gameplay.
You can adjust the radius size of your filter, or even create a custom filter shape to include the best servers for your connection. If you’d like more information about the locations of the game servers, you can use another DumaOS feature – Ping Heatmap.
This feature will ping all MW3 servers and display their ping values. Then you can include the low ping servers within your Geo-Filter to only play on those low ping servers with great gameplay.
Steady Ping
Steady Ping is an extremely powerful new feature that will remove jitter from your connection. By artificially increasing your ping slightly, Steady Ping is able to provide you with an insanely stable connection.
Stability in your connection is the most important thing when it comes to smooth and responsive Modern Warfare 3 gameplay.
You can activate Steady Ping within Geo-Filter. Once it is active, it will apply to any game that you are using in Geo-Filter. Once you connect to a game, Steady Ping will automatically stabilize your connection. You can see this happening in real time from the side panel of Geo-Filter as your ping graph stabilizes.
We have a full video explaining Steady Ping as its quite a technical feature, you can check it out here.
SmartBOOST
Now your CoD: Modern Warfare 3 connection has been optimized for gaming using Geo-Filter and Steady Ping, it’s time to optimize the network traffic in your home.
As you already know, gaming on a busy network can ruin your gaming experience. Whether it’s people streaming 4k films or downloading files, it’s going to take bandwidth away from your gaming, and that’s not ideal for dropping MGB’s.
Luckily, SmartBOOST solves this issue. By prioritizing specific activities like gaming, you can ensure their traffic always comes first on your network. You can also prioritize whole devices, so all traffic from the device will be prioritized.
SmartBOOST automatically allocates the optimal amount of bandwidth to prioritized activities. You can see this happening in real time from the network activity graph. This means even if you have gaming as your top priority, as you should, other activities in the house won’t suffer because of it.
It’s a common misconception that gaming needs a fast connection for smooth gameplay. But this isn’t true, the stability of your connection is the most important thing for smooth gaming. SmartBOOST stops other activities slowing down your gaming traffic, and puts it to the front of the queue on your network. This ensures nothing gets in the way of your gaming traffic, so there is a constant steady flow of traffic from your PC or console to the game server.
Outro
That wraps the blog up. If you have followed all the steps in this blog, you should be able to see a huge difference in your CoD: Modern Warfare 3 connection, and hopefully in your K/D ratio too.
We have plenty more DumaOS gaming content on our YouTube channel as well. Check it out if you want to see how to use the features in DumaOS to optimize your connection for other games.
If you would like to learn more about DumaOS 4 and how to get your hands on it, check out our website here.
As a special thank you for reading the whole blog here’s a discount code for the brand new Netduma R3 gaming router. The R3 comes with DumaOS 4 installed, so you can use all of the features mentioned in the blog and more to optimize your connection.
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