High ping, packet burst, and rubber-banding are the last things you want to happen in that 1-on-1 for Warzone victory. Whether you're connecting to far-away servers or other people in your home are hogging the bandwidth, we all know lag in Warzone sucks.
That's where we come in. In this blog, we have a range of tips to help you solve the connection issues that are stopping you from wiping squads in Urzikstan. It doesn't matter if you're playing on PC, PlayStation, or Xbox; these fixes will make a huge difference to your connection quality.
Server Status
Before you change anything in your network setup or game settings, it's worth checking the status of the Call of Duty Servers. If you are experiencing high ping and lag on a usually stable connection, it could be due to server issues. This is especially common if you are playing during peak times or if a new season or update has launched.
Another sign the game servers are experiencing issues is problems logging in to or connecting to the Call of Duty game service. Unfortunately, in this scenario, there's not much you can do other than wait for the developers to fix or update the servers.
We'll link to the official Call of Duty online status page, so you can check if it's the servers that are causing your lag. Another useful site to check is Down Detector, which logs if other players are reporting server issues.
Wired Connection
Packet loss and packet burst can leave you feeling completely unable to control your character movement or aim. It's even more frustrating when it happens as a gunfight starts. One of the main causes of these issues is using a wireless (Wi-Fi) connection when gaming online.
Even though it's super convenient to connect your PC or console using Wi-Fi, it's not ideal for gaming. If the signals need to travel through walls or floors to reach your device, the signal strength may be weakened or even drop out completely.
Wherever possible, we would always recommend using a wired (Ethernet) connection when gaming. This will provide a much more stable connection, which is the most important thing when it comes to gaming.
If you are unable to run an ethernet cable throughout your home, you could look into Powerline Adapters. This piece of tech will carry an ethernet connection through your home's existing electrical wiring, allowing devices far away or in different rooms to have a stable connection.
DumaOS 4
This is where we take network optimisation to the next level. If you want the best possible connection in Warzone, you need DumaOS.
It's a set of tools that allows you to choose what servers you play on, remove jitter from your connection, and prioritise gaming on your network.
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 Warzone.
If your router doesn’t have DumaOS 4 yet, you can still use DumaOS 3.3 or previous versions to optimise your connection. We have a blog covering this here.
Geo-Filter 2.0
So let's start with choosing what servers you play on. Geo-Filter is the only way to control what servers you connect to when you search for a game in Warzone.
But what's so good about being able to choose what server you play on? Well, connecting to a server that is far away from you means your game data takes longer to reach the server. This results in much higher ping and delay in-game, which is going to give you a huge disadvantage in a gunfight.
Geo-Filter solves this problem by creating a filter radius around your home location. Once you add your PC or games console to the Geo-Filter, you will only connect to servers inside this radius, keeping the games close to home and with low ping every time you search for a game.
You can use another DumaOS feature, Ping Heatmap, to find the location of the Warzone game servers. Select Warzone from the dropdown menu and the game servers will appear on the map. Each server is colour-coded and will show the average ping value you'd have if you were to connect to them.
Now you know where the best servers with the lowest ping are, you can adjust your Geo-Filter radius to include them. If you want to be even more specific, you can use "Custom" filter mode. This allows you to draw custom filter shapes around servers, rather than using the radius.
Steady Ping
Steady Ping is a new and powerful gaming feature that completely stabilises your connection. It does this by adding an artificial buffer to your ping. This will slightly increase your ping, but the benefit of this is there will be no jitter in your ping. Meaning you'll be playing on a constant ping value, giving you smooth and stable gameplay.
Like we mentioned with a wired connection, stability in your connection is the most important thing when it comes to gaming.
Steady Ping can be activated in the Geo-Filter UI. Once activated, it will automatically stabilise your ping when you connect to a game. You can see it happening in real time from the side panel of Geo-Filter.
SmartBOOST
So now your connection has been optimised for gaming; it's time to stop anyone else on your network slowing you down. It's very common to be gaming on a busy network now. Whether it's people streaming 4K video, downloading files, or on a Zoom call, it's going to take bandwidth away from gaming.
SmartBOOST is the ultimate QoS (Quality of Service) tool that automatically manages your bandwidth. SmartBOOST knows the optimal amount of bandwidth each activity needs for the best performance. It then only allocates the optimal amount, so big activities like streaming and downloading won't take more than they need.
SmartBOOST also allows you to prioritise your gaming traffic. By putting "Gaming" at the top of your priority list, all gaming traffic will be pushed to the front of the queue. This means other activities on the network can't slow your gaming traffic down.
Thanks For Reading
If you have followed all the steps in this blog, you should see a night-and-day difference in your connection, and hopefully your gameplay.
We've only covered the gaming features included in DumaOS in this blog. If you'd like to learn more about these features and the other features included in DumaOS, check out the rest of our site here.
We have plenty more DumaOS and gaming-related content on our YouTube channel as well if you'd prefer to watch the content instead.
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 the features mentioned in the blog and more to optimise your connection.
Use code: WZBLOG
for 10% off your Netduma R3 purchase