PUBG lag and high ping: causes and fixes

PUBG: Battlegrounds lags in a pattern: often on the plane and in the first minutes, less in the middle, and at the worst moment in the final fight. Some of that is the game and some is your connection. Here's how to tell them apart and what helps.

Why PUBG lags when it does

A match starts with up to a hundred players on one server, all landing at once on a big map. That's the heaviest moment for the server and for the amount of data your game receives. If the start of every match stutters and it settles once the first circle closes, much of that is the game itself.

The final fights are the opposite: few players, little to send, but every millisecond matters. Lag you notice there is almost always your connection: the ping to the server, or packets that arrive late or not at all.

See your ping in the game

PUBG can show its network figures while you play: in the Gameplay settings, switch on Network Debug Statistics. Watch your ping and packet loss across a whole match:

• High and steady: distance to the region's servers, or a long road to them.
• Jumping: queueing on the way, often on your own line or Wi-Fi. What causes ping spikes shows how to find where.
• Loss: shots that don't register, players that jump. Ping, jitter and packet loss explains why even a little matters.

Also check the server region in the lobby. Playing on a region far from you adds its whole distance to every match.

What helps

1. Play on the closest region. A shorter queue somewhere far away costs you in every fight.
2. Use a cable. Wi-Fi's jitter and loss do the most damage in close fights. Wi-Fi or Ethernet explains.
3. Keep the line quiet during matches: updates, uploads and streams elsewhere in the home.
4. Keep frames steady. PUBG is demanding, and a frame-rate drop in a hot drop feels like lag. Windows settings for FPS covers what to change.
5. Change the route when your ping is higher than the distance to the region explains, or rises every evening.

Where NoSpike fits

NoSpike's PUBG entry is a beta: its servers are still being mapped, so NoSpike may not carry all of a match's traffic yet. While you play, PUBG's page in the app says what it carries, and on a server NoSpike doesn't route it shows your own ping and says "Match not routed".

Where it does carry the game, it measures your own route and the routes through its relays in Europe, and routes PUBG only when a relay is faster. It can't make a crowded server faster at the start of a match; it can give your connection a better road to it.