MTU Router Setting. Improve Gaming Preformance!

[dillacorn]

Scroll down if you want the solution to having ping issues in games on a DSL network with 12mbps, 18mbps, or 25mbps down and/or lower.

Maximum Transmission Unit known as "MTU" on the router settings is commonly untouched on DSL networks in particular.

Sometimes on DSL network that get 12mbps or 18mbps suffer from not having network fragmentation which MTU enables when lowered below 1500.

The default setting "1500" for MTU means that the network has no network fragmentation which is commonly what you want when maybe only using two devices or especially on a network that gets 65mbps download and a higher upload speed.

There is a downfall to this though.. Sense a device connected to the network is allowed to send and receive a max MTU of 1500 on a standard unmodified network it can cause issues for others like for example ping in video games, latency, and even just browsing the internet. What I am saying is the network cannot handle a specific upload and download packet speed for all devices on the network at once.

Packets work differently than just saying a particular speed is good. This is the best I know how to explain MTU.

If you want to learn more about MTU, then research it on forums and on youtube videos to see if it helped others for gaming specifically on a slower network.

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Why am I bringing this MTU up anyway?

I have recently found out that reducing the MTU can lead to a more stable network on a slower speed network. This will not make a difference on a faster speed network that is above lets say a 25mbps from experience.

This is how you get the correct MTU for your network.

Open CMD.

Type this into CMD "ping www.google.com -f -l 1492"

If it says "Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set." then retry with a lower value.

If you got the above then type "ping www.google.com -f -l 1482" and so on until you get no packet loss.

Once you find the correct number, for example, mine was 1412 then add 28 to it.

Once you have added 28 to your stable MTU number then it should look like this example (1412 + 28 = 1440)

1440 is my stable MTU.

Now what you want to do is go into your router settings and find your MTU setting and change it to that value.

Hope this helps people that have a very unstable network! Good luck to everyone!