Using a VPN can Actually reduce Lag?

xAarionx

I was wondering and I want to know if anyone here has experience and opinion about VPN
There is a common sense spread in the web the using a VPN can actually reduce latency, and the explanation for that also makes sense (make your data travel to a dedicated private broadband)

But I tried several VPNs (free trials of course) None of them gave-me any increase in gaming performance. In fact, some of them made it worse, even looking out for server near texas (where , at the time, a checke to be where the core NA server is present. But nevertheless, no change

I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or the efect of VPNs or connection speed is trully negligible

SirAndy

A VPN will only decrease your lag if it provides a faster route to the ESO server(s) when compared to your normal ISP network.

If you end up with less hops and a better ping, you'll see some improvements, otherwise you will not and in fact can end up with a worse connection.

There is no magick inside VPNs ...

Also worth noting, most of the lag in ESO comes from the server side processing of data, not the transmission.
So even if you moved right next to the ESO server farm colo with a 0 ping, you'd still have server lag.

Mayrael

SirAndy wrote: »

A VPN will only decrease your lag if it provides a faster route to the ESO server(s) when compared to your normal ISP network.

If you end up with less hops and a better ping, you'll see some improvements, otherwise you will not and in fact can end up with a worse connection.

There is no magick inside VPNs ...

Also worth noting, most of the lag in ESO comes from the server side processing of data, not the transmission.
So even if you moved right next to the ESO server farm colo with a 0 ping, you'd still have server lag.

This. I used to test WTFast and some Asian soft (which name I have forgotten) that supposedly would improve my connection. TBH the only difference I saw was increase in ping floating. Like SirAndy said, there is no magic in VPNs it's just other way to get to the same goal, sometimes it can be faster, sometimes it can be slower but one is sure, if ZOS won't improve their infrastructure you will still get the lag.

Sylvermynx

About a year back, I tried some VPNs (free trials) to see if I could gain some speed since satellite is so high ping - and HughesNet, though telling me it probably wouldn't work, were fine with me trying it - and if my ping improved, were also fine with me using a VPN (as WildBlue was absolutely not going to allow it).

They were right - it didn't work. The entire "lag" component from here to the server farm in Texas or wherever - is the time up to the sat, and the return down to here. The intervening hops to the servers were quite fast, but from here to sat averages about 3 seconds, and from the sat to here about 1.5 seconds - so my average ping (including the really fast hops from the sat to the servers and back) is around 750 ms.

Which is easily twice as fast as WildBlue was. I guess I'm happy with improvement even if it's not "really fast"!

lazywhiteseal

assuming you're in the US and have an average ping of 40 and you lag. thats eso server problem not your internet speed or location. i heard 1megabit is enough to have stable connection between you and the server. so increasing your internet speed from 100mb to 500mb wont increase by 5 times.

when you are in a foreign country heres the journey of the data that goes in and out
eso server-> ISP-> telecomm company->your computer. i might be wrong bout this depending on your country.
from ISP to telecomm company, ask the company if they provide unlimited speed.
there are 2 TCs in my country where they limit the down,upload speed from foreign servers to decrease the fee they have to pay to the ISP. check with your company on this.
so if you add vpn between any point in this map theoretically youre increasing more travel distance/detour, thus more ping or lag. but i havent done much research in this but what i have found some people actually receive positive effect not sure how.
only realistic positive effect i saw in vpn is hiding ip. for example if your country bans pornhub you can access it with vpn.

Diminish

As others have said, the only way a VPN is going to decrease latency is if the VPN you are connecting to has a more optimal route to the ESO server. For those of you on satellite Internet, your latency is due to you connecting to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit; nothing you do other than switching ISP's is going to make much difference.

woe

If anyone actually wants a recommendation, check out windscribe. You can pick certain locations like one's that are closer to the server you play on and instead of paying something like 10-15$ they just charge you fox the servers you pick. My current plan is Canada, US and Japan and it's 3$

Sylvermynx

Heh. Yeah. I really wanted VPN to be the "fix" for sat lag. It's not. But that's okay. At least I'm not still on dialup - or WildBlue....

LashanW

Like others said, a VPN will only help if there is a performance issue in the usual network path between you and the server, and your VPN service is able to provide you a better network path. Performance issues in the network path can be more common when you are far from the server region.

I've been playing on PC-EU for 3+ years now (I live pretty far from Europe) and I know from experience and various ping tests that my usual ping to Germany (where PC-EU server is) is around 170ms. But some parts of the year my ping in ESO goes up to 300-400ms (with nothing changing from my end) and the game becomes very laggy and unresponsive in all content. I use a VPN during such times which pretty much brings the ping down to what it should be. Back to around 180ms.

I use ExpressVPN and I connect to their "Germany - Frankfurt - 1" server. These days I can't do any competitive gameplay (PvE or PvP) without the VPN.

LashanW

lazywhiteseal wrote: »

so if you add vpn between any point in this map theoretically youre increasing more travel distance/detour, thus more ping or lag. but i havent done much research in this but what i have found some people actually receive positive effect not sure how.

When you are pretty far from the ESO server, there are several ISPs between you and the server. They usually pick the cheapest network paths, not the fastest. Paid VPN services generally use faster and more efficient paths, sometimes their own private networks (which is why people would actually bother to pay for them). I don't think free VPN services do this.

PigofSteel

Short : no

danno8

Sylvermynx wrote: »

About a year back, I tried some VPNs (free trials) to see if I could gain some speed since satellite is so high ping - and HughesNet, though telling me it probably wouldn't work, were fine with me trying it - and if my ping improved, were also fine with me using a VPN (as WildBlue was absolutely not going to allow it).

They were right - it didn't work. The entire "lag" component from here to the server farm in Texas or wherever - is the time up to the sat, and the return down to here. The intervening hops to the servers were quite fast, but from here to sat averages about 3 seconds, and from the sat to here about 1.5 seconds - so my average ping (including the really fast hops from the sat to the servers and back) is around 750 ms.

Which is easily twice as fast as WildBlue was. I guess I'm happy with improvement even if it's not "really fast"!

3 seconds is 3000 ms. 1.5s is 1500 ms. You would be having at least 4.5 seconds of lag if that were the case.

danno8

(Paid) VPNs are great for privacy or getting around annoying regional restriction ("sorry this video is not available in your country" messages when you are looking for news or something.)

They are generally going to be a bit slower since you are adding another point of congestion to your trip as well as another layer of encryption.

Unless you are getting around another even worse point of congestion you are likely to see more time added to your round trip.

xAarionx

lazywhiteseal wrote: »

assuming you're in the US and have an average ping of 40 and you lag. thats eso server problem not your internet speed or location. i heard 1megabit is enough to have stable connection between you and the server. so increasing your internet speed from 100mb to 500mb wont increase by 5 times.

when you are in a foreign country heres the journey of the data that goes in and out
eso server-> ISP-> telecomm company->your computer. i might be wrong bout this depending on your country.
from ISP to telecomm company, ask the company if they provide unlimited speed.
there are 2 TCs in my country where they limit the down,upload speed from foreign servers to decrease the fee they have to pay to the ISP. check with your company on this.
so if you add vpn between any point in this map theoretically youre increasing more travel distance/detour, thus more ping or lag. but i havent done much research in this but what i have found some people actually receive positive effect not sure how.
only realistic positive effect i saw in vpn is hiding ip. for example if your country bans pornhub you can access it with vpn.

I'm Actually on south america, so, yeh quite distant....

PaddyVu

My country is Vietnam and i use both NordVPN and ProtonVPN => connect to Japan => ping reduce from 350-999+ to 220-255

Goregrinder

IF your packets are being bounced through a very indirect route to and from your machine and the main game server, then a service that offers bouncing your packets through their nodes with a more direct route to the main game server can lower your latency. By how much? It really varies..sometimes by maybe 5 or so ms on average. Sometimes a little more. Sometimes not by anything. It's really only helpful if your ISP is routing your traffic in a very indirect way, as in your packets are hopping through more nodes than they should.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

SirAndy wrote: »

Also worth noting, most of the lag in ESO comes from the server side processing of data, not the transmission.
So even if you moved right next to the ESO server farm colo with a 0 ping, you'd still have server lag.

I very much doubt this. I would like to know what your reasons for thinking this the case.

With my network running well the transactions are pretty well instant. When there are problems both local, and with intervening networks lag creeps in. It just a data base with a fancy UI, and we are good at databases.

aetherial_heavenn

Goregrinder wrote: »

IF your packets are being bounced through a very indirect route to and from your machine and the main game server, then a service that offers bouncing your packets through their nodes with a more direct route to the main game server can lower your latency. By how much? It really varies..sometimes by maybe 5 or so ms on average. Sometimes a little more. Sometimes not by anything. It's really only helpful if your ISP is routing your traffic in a very indirect way, as in your packets are hopping through more nodes than they should.

For Australians we can get about 60- 100ms reduction from East/South Coast states to US Central nodes near Zos server using a VPN. This can take us into the a shade under 300ms range which makes most difficult content playable-just.

When 'they' had us routed thru Akamai which routed Australian and NZ players to Hong Kong! and then the Netherlands! it took about 140ms off 480ms plus that I was routinely getting in Cyrodil/Trials because it let me force it to a better route after it left Assamai's scrubber. (There is a 28 plus page thread on forum somewhere showing all the data if you want to fact check the tracert's etc. from the time in hell.)

Mudfish is also one that is cheap-costs me a bout $5 every three-four months months-and lets you choose your route so you can avoid high traffic or broken nodes. It needs a bit of working out for yourself, but even setting and forgetting the auto routing through 'basic setting' can help if your ISP/their network provider is sending you somewhare weird.

But doesn't help with server congestion, the new Akamai scrubber being under resourced for the volume of traffic or the (contentious!) server-side lag or satellites.

edited for spelling and accuracy.

olsborg

Ive tried a couple different vpn providers and didnt rly notice any improvement.

WySoSirius

I have nordvpn. Paid for. And I noticed the latency increased for me. I am AWST. And my ping averages 260-300 without vpn on. And it increases about 20-100 ping switched on. So imo vpns are not worth it for gaming

Reaper_00

SirAndy summed it up pretty well. Keep in mind that unless you are using a gaming specific VPN service, VPNs are primarily used for privacy and communication security and will usually slow down your internet connection (unless your ISP has routing issues as already mentioned) as they add an additional layer of encryption to the data being sent and received.

If you are having routing issues I'd recommend Mudfish VPN. It is a bit harder to setup than things like WTFast, but it gives you a lot more control to tailor your connection to route around any poorly performing nodes

Nestor

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Also worth noting, most of the lag in ESO comes from the server side processing of data, not the transmission.
So even if you moved right next to the ESO server farm colo with a 0 ping, you'd still have server lag.

I very much doubt this. I would like to know what your reasons for thinking this the case.

With my network running well the transactions are pretty well instant. When there are problems both local, and with intervening networks lag creeps in. It just a data base with a fancy UI, and we are good at databases.

If it was just a database.....

I live, literally, down the street from the server farm, with about as direct a path through my ISP that you can get, and I get Lag.

Toanis

Using a privacy VPN intended for hiding IPs and encrypting traffic will only worsen your performance. A gaming VPN that just forwards the data directly within their server network to avoid bottlenecks might help...

...improving your overall ping when your ISP's routing is bad (the better the routing the more expensive for your ISP)
...manually circumventing problematic nodes that throttle gaming traffic / prioritise premium traffic.
...reduce ping fluctuations (i.e. instead of 60-200 you get a constant 80ms)

That said, I have a stable 13ms ping to ESO's EU servers, and 60-100 ingame latency (not fluctuating but steadily increasing over the day, likely dependent on number of players online), not much that can be improved here routing-wise.

Other games have far less server-side delay, less than +10ms for Swtor and Wow, for example. When 90% of the latency depends on the internet playing along, optimized routing using a gaming VPN can help a lot; for ESO not so much.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

Nestor wrote: »

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Also worth noting, most of the lag in ESO comes from the server side processing of data, not the transmission.
So even if you moved right next to the ESO server farm colo with a 0 ping, you'd still have server lag.

I very much doubt this. I would like to know what your reasons for thinking this the case.

With my network running well the transactions are pretty well instant. When there are problems both local, and with intervening networks lag creeps in. It just a data base with a fancy UI, and we are good at databases.

If it was just a database.....

I live, literally, down the street from the server farm, with about as direct a path through my ISP that you can get, and I get Lag.

Poor you. I can help with PC network problems. I live on Vancouver Island and its pretty well instant here. No lag until the network get funky and this with a WiFi final connection.

Sleep

yes, if you live in china