I used to get a steady 35–45 ms ping while playing Fortnite in Wyoming. During a summer trip to Maine, my ping increased to around 60–75 ms while using Wi‑Fi, then rose to roughly 90–100 ms after a game update. Now that I'm back in Wyoming, the connection fluctuates between about 55 and 150 ms, with 95–100 ms being typical. The occasional 150 ms spikes make the game nearly unplayable. What could be causing this, and how can I troubleshoot it?
1 Answer
Run a bufferbloat test first and check the grade and latency increase under load. If the results are poor, another device or upload/download activity on the network may be causing your ping spikes. Also test with Ethernet instead of Wi‑Fi, pause other downloads or streams, and restart or update the router. If bufferbloat is fine, the issue could be Fortnite routing you to a different server region or an ISP routing problem.
I ran the test and the results show a noticeable latency increase while the connection is under load, so bufferbloat may be the cause. I’ll try testing over Ethernet and checking what else is using the network.