The trend of a faster internet speed is growing. And it’s not only the speed of the internet connection that matters but also how many devices can connect to the network at once.

In order to enjoy a fast and seamless online experience, your household needs to have enough bandwidth for all devices connected at once. So, coming back to the question…

Is 400 Mbps Good? Is 400 Mbps fast?

400 Mbps is on the faster end of internet speeds that people have access to today. It’s fast and takes only 11 seconds to download a video that is an hour-long at 480p resolution.

Which Connection Type to Choose?

Always choose Fiber Optic (especially for gaming) whenever you can.

Fiber-optic connections provide the fastest way to transfer information online. They make tasks like sending e-mails and downloading videos much faster than other ways of transferring information over the Internet. Generally, they provide equal download and upload speeds.

Fiber is a type of cable that’s faster and more reliable than a standard cable or DSL network.

Now let’s see have access to other aspects that we should know if you are planning to go for internet service providers.

Is 400 Mbps Good For Gaming?

400 Mbps is a good choice for gaming but the performance depends on the latency and the distance of your ISP’s server from the servers of the game you will be playing.

Online gaming is impossible without a strong internet connection. The better the download speeds the better will be the performance. But that is always not the case.

Also see: Is 200 Mbps fast?

If you ask your internet provider to provide you with a fast internet speed, but a fast internet speed might not be a quality internet. Especially when you are talking about gaming having a high download speed is not all that matters.

The article would be of great help if you want to know everything about your internet speed, gaming, and the type of connection that you need for gaming.

What is the ideal download speed for gaming?

The image that you see on your display of the monitor is never ended by the internet connection except for online streaming. This job is done by the graphic card of your gaming console or PC.

All this can have a significant conclusion that you don’t need an intense bandwidth for online gaming.

You don’t need extreme consumption of the internet to play the latest online games even with high-definition images. Even an Internet connection of two 3 Mbps would do fine for your gaming task.

This is because the only feed that your computer takes using the internet is the buttons that you press while controlling your moves in the game. Interesting! right?

However, all this does not stand true for cloud-based servers like Stadia and PlayStation now.

What about cloud gaming?

Cloud gaming means that you are playing games on a remote system instead of playing the game on your device. Stadia and PlayStation are the most common examples of cloud gaming.

Remember the explanation of how your graphic card delivers images on the screen when you are playing a game online.

Even there, I mentioned an exception for cloud gaming because, in cloud gaming, the control is no longer with a graphic card. Your graphic card is no longer rendering pictures on the screen. Instead, the pictures are being rendered by internet connection.

Thus, for cloud gaming, you would require much higher internet speed even though the latency remains the same the higher the downloading and uploading speed the better for you.

What is an ideal upload speed for gaming?

While playing a game on the internet you are not just downloading the content but you are also sending your information to the server on the other end.

This is why considering upload speed is also important. In this case, an upload speed of 1 to 3 Mbps will do fine for gaming and it’s not difficult to find this much speed.

If you can arrange a download speed of 3 MBPS and upload speed of 2 Mbps along with a latency of 100 ms, your gaming experience is going to be pretty much smooth.

If you want to keep it safer than this you can have 5 Mbps for downloading speed and 3 Mbps for uploading speed with a latency of 100ms.

This would be more than enough for playing online games. The speed of download and upload is not the same as the speed at which the information signal Travel to and fro.

Downloading a movie over a DSL connection at 5 Mbps will take much longer than downloading it over a satellite connection at 50 Mbps. When you play online games, the DSL will be much more responsive because its latency is low. Lag will likely occur with the satellite connection due to its high latency rate.

Even though most modern internet connections are very fast, it is still important to pay attention to your internet connection’s latency when streaming high-quality games. This is due to the fact that latency is a measure of how long it takes a signal to travel from the device to the server and back.

In some cases, latencies are referred to as ping rates. High latencies cause lag, while low latencies result in smooth gaming.

What are the factors that affect latency?

Latency is affected by the distance that you keep between the server and the gaming device. You must have noticed that online games ensure that they have a regional server. Now you know why it is done so.

Latency is also affected by the type of signal that you use.

The number of routers through which the signal passes also impacts the latency.

The latency rate of a cable connection would be much less compared to a satellite internet because, for satellite internet, the transmission is carried out wirelessly, but for the cable, the connection internet travels through wires.

What is the ideal internet connection for gaming?

The ideal internet connection for online gaming is a fiber optic connection because the speed of fiber-optic connection is much more than the copper ones. Many people use a 5G cable connection.

The latest 5G cable connections are much improved versions of the previous ones but we can still not rely completely on them for streaming online games.

One of the reasons for the same is that we still do not have enough latency information on the 5G connection because the technology has not completely evolved yet.

A simple rule states: lower the latency better will be the internet speed for online gaming. So you should try and keep your latency below 100 ms as far as possible.

Connection	Download speed	Latency
Fiber	Up to 2 Gbps	11 to 14 ms
Cable	Up to 1 Gbps	15 to 35 ms
DSL	Up to 100 Mbps	25 to 43 ms
5G	Up to 1 Gbps	50ms to 150ms
4G LTE	Up to 100 Mbps	100 to 200 ms
Satellite	Up to 100 Mbps	594 to 624 ms

How to minimize lags if you have high latency?

Streaming online games with high latency is a very tough job because you will meet a lot of lagging issues. That is why we have come up with a few ways that can help you reduce lags even with high latency.

Try plugging ethernet into your router

If you want an extremely responsive internet connection you must try using an ethernet cable and plugging it into your router. This will help you combat the frequent lags and delays which occur even if you are using the fastest wireless connections.

Reduce distance of the server

You must maintain minimum distance with the server. This works best when you are trying to reduce lag issues with your internet.

If you are using Wi-Fi you must ensure that the location of your Wi-Fi is nearest to the device that you use to play online games. This again helps in reducing the lagging issue.

Try a router reset

Restarting or resetting your network can often set a new cycle for the system to work on. This would eliminate any sort of lags that cause friction in the functionality of the system.

Update your driver

It is important to update your hardware drivers if you want to obtain a smooth performance. Updating the system reinforces the continuity of the performance of the device thereby helping the latency.

Minimize network trafficking

The best way to reduce lag is to minimize the number of members consuming the internet from a certain source. Make sure that when you’re streaming an online game, nobody else is consuming heavier internet at that time.

Even if other people are consuming the internet, make sure that they are not streaming online videos and movies on platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc that require a lot of speed and quality.

These were some of the steps that can significantly help you combat lags in your system while streaming online games.