After installing Windows 7 I noticed a slight increase in network latency in several online games. It wasn’t a big deal – I’m talking 200-300ms, but this is on a connection that was reliably < 100ms in the past. Beyond the obvious settings in Windows or on your router, here’s a list of tweaks that may help quite a bit. It involves disabling Nagle’s algorithm, also commonly known as TCP no delay, which is basically an optimization of network traffic that tries to reduce overall packet volume but can cause extra latency in the connection. This should work on Windows 7 or Vista, though the same principle can probably applied to other operating systems as well.
- From a command prompt (usually in All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt) run “regedit”
- Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
- Browse the items under interfaces until you find one that has an IPAddress entry matching the network interface you want to affect (typically LAN IP addresses start with 192.168 or 10.0); note that if your IP address is automatically assigned by a DHCP server you may need to look for a matching DhcpIPAddress instead of IPAddress
- Right-click on the interface and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, name it “TcpAckFrequency”
- Right-click the new TcpAckFrequency value and select Modify, enter “1″ (Hexadecimal radio button should be selected)
- Right-click on the interface and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, name it “TCPNoDelay” (note that TCP is all uppercase this time – that’s intentional)
- Right-click the new TCPNoDelay value and select Modify, enter “1″ (Hexadecimal radio button should be selected)
- Verify that both TcpAckFrequency and TCPNoDelay now show up in the adapter’s property list with types REG_DWORD and values 0×00000001
- Exit regedit and reboot (reboot is necessary for the changes to take effect!)
- Play a game and enjoy your new low ping
This decreased my ping in most games from 200-300ms to 50-60ms, which matches the latency I would see via a tracert to the game’s server.
#1 by john on November 22, 2011 - 7:27 pm
oh my god..it doesnt work on me win7.core toduo
#2 by john on November 22, 2011 - 7:27 pm
please help
#3 by Dylan W on November 22, 2011 - 7:30 pm
hi, I tried this method and it seemed to be a success; no issues but it didn’t change my latency in anyway, my latency is still 200ms on average which is depressing, any ideas on why this is so?
#4 by Philip on November 26, 2011 - 7:27 am
hi ive done all the steps, but on step 4, there was already a file called TcpAckFrequency and had a 1 hexadecimal and also how do i check if their in my adapters?
#5 by Zenon on December 7, 2011 - 11:43 pm
OMG its doesn’t work on my Windows7 Ultimate
Before 24
After 30
( T__T )
#6 by Errold on December 8, 2011 - 12:21 am
This worked beautifully. Followed the easy steps and instead of seeing a lot of 100-300ms servers on TF2, they reduced to <100ms
Thanks so much!
#7 by AWESOME!!!! on December 10, 2011 - 12:01 pm
Thank you so much for posting this! After trying many tweaks and suggestions on how to improve gaming quality on RoadRunner Internet, I was pretty much convinced it wasn’t the service. Glad to see it was actually my computer, and this simple fix took car of my problem. I used to get frequent, HUGE lag spikes when gaming online. I would even get HUGE spikes just playing over LAN. Implemented this on my computer and no lag over LAN anymore, and the frequency and duration of lag when gaming online has dropped so much it’s a rarity now. Thanks! I’m sharing this with all my gamer friends!
#8 by HUNYAIN ZUDDOZAI on December 11, 2011 - 3:27 am
could,nt understand # 8 how verify ,,, from where???
#9 by HUNYAIN ZUDDOZAI on December 11, 2011 - 3:35 am
ACTUALLY WHAT THE HELL IS STEP 8 ‘ SIMPLIFY THAT PLZ!!!
#10 by Dustin on December 18, 2011 - 10:42 pm
Step 8 is just asking you to look at the screen and make sure the values you created show up in the property list, as in you didn’t accidentally mistype or cancel them. That’s all.
#11 by Dustin on December 18, 2011 - 10:44 pm
If you’re already in the sub-50ms range this isn’t going to help you. Any latency there is going to be caused by something else and pretty unlikely it’s from your client unless you are connecting to some host really close by on your same ISP! The telltale sign of these settings causing an issue is unable to get below the 100ms mark no matter what you do.
#12 by mohammmed on December 26, 2011 - 9:53 pm
i have i5 2300
8gb ram
1tb hard disk
1080p hd monitor
1.6 gb graphics
even though it laggs,even cs 1.6 laggs when i put xp it dosent lagg xp is ment for gaming
#13 by benny on January 11, 2012 - 5:11 pm
can someone explain to me what step 3 is? thanks.
#14 by Vasilis on January 24, 2012 - 10:05 pm
hi
just did it and ping went Double !
deleted both Keys and Rebooted but still pings are double,,,
do u have any plan to fix it ??? Ruined my day…
#15 by gutko on January 27, 2012 - 11:43 am
before 150-200
after 50
#16 by tgcremo on February 1, 2012 - 11:34 am
this mainly works with mmorpg’s or other tcp traffic dependant games, all fast action games like FPS’s only use tcp for background communications masterserver browser ect…, all input/output game data uses udp which doesnt require packet acknowledgement. So this will not lower your latency in those type of games. tf2 mw2/3 bf3 ect…
#17 by tgcremo on February 1, 2012 - 11:36 am
http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-games/6644-windows-7-gaming-latency-fix.html
this does the same for those that are uncomfortable editing their registry
#18 by Saii on February 21, 2012 - 12:11 am
it is your internet, you didn’t need to edit just to have low ping.. i try this 2x but still not work.. contact your ISP and tell what your experiencing it can help you really.
#19 by OMFGTHISWORKS on March 2, 2012 - 1:50 am
i spent over 10 hours then found this article, problem fixed in less then 1 minute (mysterious problem after windows update) my ping went from 268 in BF3 to 61 and Gmod ping went from 209 to 99, im so glad a old article is still alive. also plus made my internet get more then its full 50 megabits /sec
#20 by otosan on March 18, 2012 - 12:40 pm
Amazing! This even help me to enjoy football streaming smoother! Before do the tweak, the streaming simply keep lagging because of latency, after tweak it become so smooth!