League of Legends EUW ping: why it's high and what helps

Every EUW game of League of Legends is played in Amsterdam. Two players the same distance from it can still see very different pings, and the same player can see a different one every evening. Here's why, and what changes it.

Where EUW plays

Riot hosts Europe West in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and carries much of the traffic to it on its own network, Riot Direct. A player in the Netherlands or Belgium is close by; one in Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal or the far south of Italy is a long way off, and some of that distance is simply light in fibre.

A rough rule: the straight-line distance adds about 1 ms of round trip for every 100 km. If your ping to EUW is a lot more than that, plus a few milliseconds for your own line, the extra is the route your traffic takes, not the distance.

Why your ping to Amsterdam varies

• Your provider's road to Riot. Some providers hand traffic to Riot's network close to home. Others carry it through another country first, or across a crowded exchange. That's why neighbours on different providers see different pings.
• The evening. When everyone in your area streams and plays at once, a provider's busiest links fill up and packets queue. A ping that's fine at noon and bad at nine is this.
• Your home. Wi-Fi, a shared line with someone uploading, or a router with a long queue add jitter and spikes on top of the rest.

Check what you have

Press Ctrl + F in a game to show your ping. Note it at different times of day, and whether it's steady or jumping. A steady number that's too high for your distance points at the route. A number that jumps points at queueing, at home or at your provider. What causes ping spikes shows how to tell those apart in ten minutes.

What helps

1. Use a cable. It removes the jumps Wi-Fi adds, which League shows as stutter. Wi-Fi or Ethernet explains.
2. Keep the line quiet during ranked games.
3. Report evening lag to your provider with times and figures. Sometimes a busy link gets upgraded.
4. Take another road to Amsterdam. If the distance explains only part of your ping, a different path to Riot's network is what changes the rest.

Things that won't help: a faster plan, and a different DNS server. DNS only finds the address; the road your traffic takes to it stays the same.

Where NoSpike fits

NoSpike's EUW entry is verified: NoSpike knows which addresses are Riot's EUW servers and moves only that traffic, leaving everything else on your normal connection.

It measures your own route to Amsterdam and the routes through its relays in Europe, one of them in Amsterdam itself, and routes the game only when a relay is faster. It checks again every minute and won't move you in the middle of a game unless the route you're on fails. If your provider already has a good road to Riot, the app tells you so and leaves you on it.