Tip for checking your ping before starting a game

AntCru·Aug 24, 2015·4 votes·6,537 views

So every few games, there's at least one player on one team complaining about how they're lagging and not understanding why. I can't explain why you might randomly be having connection issues, but I'm going to share a tip that can help you avoid being that player by checking your ping in real time before you join a game. This should be easy to do on any windows computer (I'm sure that it can be done on Mac as well, but I don't know anything about that OS).

Open a run prompt by pressing the "windows key" and "R" at the same time.
Type (without the quotation marks): "ping -t 8.8.8.8"
Press "OK"

This should open a window that says something like "C:\WINDOWS\system32\ping.exe" at the top and that starts outputting about one line per second. In my case, a typical line will say "Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=51". What you care about is the "time=" because that is your ping to the IP address that you are pinging to. You can use any IP address that you want. I use 8.8.8.8 because its short to type and easy to remember. You can use the servers for LoL or any other online game as well if you know the IP addresses. In my case, if my ping to 8.8.8.8 is around 55ms (it is normal for it to fluctuate, but a good connection will be within a small range), I can expect my in-game ping to be around 115ms.

What I do is open the program before opening the LoL client and watch if the ping is low and steady. That way I can avoid playing with a poor connection. If you see many lines that say "Connection time out", don't play. Just don't. That means your connection is very poor to the point you're disconnecting and reconnecting to the internet. Wait until your connection is stable. And a line that says "General failure" probably means that you have a problem connecting to your router or modem.

Now, if you play and start to lag afterwards, well... at least this lets you know that the problem is with your connection rather than Riot's servers and you can rage against whomever provides you with internet access instead of Riot :P

Edit: A nice commenter has provided the following address for the game's new servers: 104.160.131.1

12 Comments

Deep Terror NamiAug 24, 20152 votes

8.8.8.8 is a google DNS server. If you want an accurate ping for the new LoL servers, use 104.160.131.1

If you use "-t" it will keep pinging until you press Ctrl + C btw. You can leave it out and it will ping 4 times then stop and give you your numbers.

AntCruAug 24, 20151 votes

Thank you. I was hoping someone would know it and post it. :) I'm too lazy and tired to search at this late hour. :P

AntCruAug 24, 20151 votes

That said, there is an advantage to testing with a different address such as 8.8.8.8, and that is a second opinion to know if the connection problem is on the game's server or if it's closer to home. Other than that, it is definitely better to use the actual LoL address.

Deep Terror NamiAug 24, 20151 votes

If you want to see where the lag starts, you can use "tracert" instead of "ping" and you'll see each hop along the route to the server. For general connection testing I'd just tell people to use pingtest.net

Deep Terror NamiAug 24, 20151 votes

I made a batch file so I just click it whenever I want to check my ping. You can google how to make one, and I use the text below;

cd c:/windows/system32 ping 104.160.131.1 -t pause

LuggAug 24, 20151 votes

My ping to the 8.8.8.8 was an average of 14ms. My ping to the new server was 91ms. Ranked is going to be much harder now. :(

Deep Terror NamiAug 24, 20152 votes

90 ms latency isn't going to hurt your gameplay any. 8.8.8.8 is not the old server anyway.

LuggAug 24, 20151 votes

I usually have 40-50 ms on the current server. I just hope that having it under 100 ms is fine.

hh the thinkerAug 24, 20151 votes

is it normal to have ping spikes every once in a while or does that actually mean that I'm going to experience lag every once in a while? basically, will it be noticeable if it stays in the 20's and then jumps high once every once in a while for a split second? it goes from 20 to 400 to 20 again and then stays at 20's for a while for example.

AntCruAug 25, 20151 votes

It happens. I wouldn't worry unless it happens a lot. If its just once a minute its probably non-problematic.

NietxscheAug 24, 20151 votes

I agree that this does indeed help to check your ping; however, I have found too many times that my ping is only 80 or so, from the above steps, and yet on my league client it says its 200. idk why this happens

AntCruAug 25, 20151 votes

Unless you're testing with the server that you are connected to, it is to be expected that there will be a difference in ping. It all depends on the distance between each server and your location.