How To Check For Packet Loss?

So you’re having trouble with your connection, and you need a way how to check packet loss.? You’ve come to the right place; read on to find out how!

What is a Packet Loss?

Packet loss is the percentage of packets that do not get from point A to point B for many reasons. In gaming, this can have a significant impact on your gameplay.

There are two main types of packet loss, server-side and client-side. 

Server packet loss typically happens when there is a problem with the connection between your console and the servers, so it will be visible in games where games connect directly to a server.

Client-side packet loss can happen due to many things, including your home network/router or other programs on your computer that could affect the flow of data from you to the game you’re playing.

How Does Packet Loss Affect Gamers?

Packet loss is a problem in the world of online gaming. It’s where packets containing information sent from one computer to another get lost along the way, resulting in unwanted side effects such as rubber banding or stuttering.

In other words, when you fire a weapon in an online game, and there is packet loss, it may not register that shot with the server. The server will eventually realize that you have fired a shot when it receives the “I shot my gun” message from your computer, but by then, it will already be too late because YOU ALREADY MISSED YOUR SHOT! 

This is one of the most significant issues online gamers face when playing games, especially first-person shooters. Hardware problems or ISP-related problems can cause this.

It’s very important to find out how much packet loss you’re experiencing because there are different amounts of acceptable packet loss for each game, and you don’t want too much. Why not? Well, if you have 0% packet loss, then it means your connection is perfect, but this isn’t what we’re looking for here today as we just need to identify whether there’s a problem or not, so anything from 1% up will do.

Let’s Get Started, Shall We?

Here are some steps on how to check packet loss.

Check Your Ping

1. To check your ping – open a command prompt. To do this, press the Windows key on your keyboard and type “cmd” (without quotes) into the search bar that appears, then hit enter. A black console will appear with a blinking cursor at the top left-hand corner of your screen.
2. Type “ping www.google.com -t” (without quotes) into the console and hit enter again. Your ping should now appear after about 3 seconds or so. You could also use devicetests.com to easily check for your ping.

If you have a 0% packet loss, you have an excellent ping, so there is no problem here. But if you have a higher ping, it means the server is far from your location.

If you’re wondering how to know what your average ping should be, then that’s simple; just go to devicetests and double-check the results they give you as this is usually accurate enough for checking pings on console as well as PC.

Check Your FPS (Frames Per Second)

Now we need to check your FPS or Frames Per Second.

To do this type, “net_graph 3” (without quotes) into the console and hit enter again. A small box will now appear on the top right-hand corner of your screen.

Your FPS represents how many frames per second that your connection can handle at that moment in time. If the number drops, then there is some packet loss somewhere along the line, so we need to find out where it’s coming from if we’re going to fix it!

Now we need to check for packet loss. To do this, still, at the command prompt, type “ping 8.8.8.8 -t” (without quotes) and hit enter again.

If you have a bad connection, then your numbers will most likely increase significantly here, but if it’s just a little bit higher than average, then don’t worry because it will usually drop when playing games offline or with less internet traffic running through your connection at that time of the day.

So well done if you’ve read to this point, as this was quite a long introduction that covered a lot of information! I hope you found it helpful and now have some idea as to whether or not your connection is bad enough for you to consider boosting it or if there’s nothing wrong at all.