Lower ping in League of Legends
Riot's engineers have called League of Legends a game of milliseconds. Your game data travels from Riot's servers through backbone companies and your internet provider to you, and the route it takes along the way can add delay. This page covers where the servers are, how to see your connection, and that route, using Riot's support articles and its engineering blog.
Where League of Legends's servers are
League runs separate game servers for each region, and your account belongs to one of them. Riot's Regional Servers page explains that an account made for one region cannot log in to another, so to play in a different region you need an account there, or an account transfer.
Where those servers sit matters, and so does the way your traffic gets there. In a 2016 engineering post, Riot described building its own network, Riot Direct, and connecting it directly to internet providers in the US. It wrote that as it did, more players than ever were playing League at a healthier ping, and that moving its game servers to Chicago improved the numbers further.
Riot was open about the limit in the same post: some providers do not set up their side of that connection the way Riot needs, so even where Riot connects to a provider directly, players may still not get the best path.
How to see your ping in League of Legends
League has a simple in-game display, and Riot's Connection Log Reader looks back at a game you already played.
- In a match, press Ctrl+F to show your latency, or ping. To change the key, open Options, then Hotkeys, then Display, then Toggle FPS Display.
- After a game that lagged, use Riot's Connection Log Reader. Upload the netlog file the game saves under C:\Riot Games\League of Legends\Logs\GameLogs, in the folder dated for that game, to see your ping, jitter and packet loss over time for that match.
- Read the connection score it gives you. Riot says that with a score of 90 or above, the issue you are facing is likely not related to networks.
What makes League of Legends lag
A long route. Riot's 2015 engineering post explains that internet providers and the backbone companies behind them send traffic along the lowest-cost path, not the lowest-latency one. In one route a League player sent them, traffic that should have gone straight from San Francisco to Portland went through Los Angeles, Denver and Seattle first: a direct trip might have taken 14 ms, and the long way took 70 ms.
Different providers, different routes. The same post notes that providers allow different routes, so a player in one house can enjoy very low latency while a friend next door, on a different provider, fights significant lag.
Packet loss on busy routers. League sends a constant stream of small messages, and Riot's post explains that a router that receives more packets than it can handle drops them, and that many routers start ignoring UDP packets, which most games use, when they are overwhelmed; those packets are never recovered. A longer route passes through more routers, which means more chances to lose them. In the game, that looks like champions darting around the screen and damage with no visible cause.
Fixes worth trying first
- Play on a cable instead of Wi-Fi if you can. Wi-Fi adds delay and drops packets when the signal is busy or weak.
- Pause downloads, game updates, streams and cloud backups on your network while you play.
- Restart your router if your ping was fine before and suddenly is not.
Changing your DNS server does not lower your in-game ping: DNS only looks up addresses before the game connects.
How NitroPing helps
Your ping depends on the path your internet provider sends League of Legends's traffic along, not only on the distance. NitroPing sends only League of Legends's traffic through one of our relay servers over an encrypted tunnel, which can be a shorter, steadier path than your provider's default route. Everything else on your PC stays on your normal connection.
Pick Auto and NitroPing measures the relays from your PC and uses the one with the lowest latency, or pick a city and it stays there.
What it cannot do: shorten the physical distance to League of Legends's servers, or fix Wi-Fi trouble or a connection that is already full. If your provider's route to the game is already good, the difference will be small.
League of Legends ping questions
What is a good ping in League of Legends?
Lower and steadier is better. When Riot's engineers measured the effect of their own network work in 2016, one yardstick was how many players play under 80 ms. The Connection Log Reader shows whether yours holds steady through a whole match.
Why did my League ping go up when nothing changed at home?
It can be the route, not your PC. Riot's 2016 post describes traffic moving to a slower path when a faster one fails, and staying there even after the faster one is back. Run your recent games through the Connection Log Reader, one netlog at a time, to see whether your connection changed.
Can I play League on another region's server?
Not with the same account. Each Riot account is linked to one League region. To play in another region you need an account in that region, or an account transfer, which Riot covers in its Account Transfer FAQ.
Does NitroPing work with League of Legends?
League of Legends is in NitroPing's game list: the app knows League's game program and routes only its traffic through the relay, while everything else stays on your normal connection.