How to troubleshoot high ping to your instance

High ping usually means there is extra network distance or congestion between you and your instance. Use the steps below to identify and fix the most common causes.

1. Choose the closest region

Pick the region that gives you the lowest latency from your location. In most cases, the closest geographic region will provide the best ping.

If you are not sure which is best, test each available region and compare your in-game latency.

2. Restrict scheduling to that region

After selecting the best region, enable Restrict scheduling to this region in the region settings.

This ensures your instance is scheduled in your selected region instead of a different region, which can otherwise increase ping.

3. Verify your local internet connection

Before opening a support ticket, confirm your local connection is stable:

• Prefer a wired Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi.
• Close heavy downloads/streams while playing.
• Restart your router/modem if your connection is unstable.
• Run a speed and stability test from your device.

4. Check if the issue happens only at certain times

If ping is only high during specific hours, this usually indicates network congestion, often caused by poor routing or peering from your ISP.

To confirm this, run a traceroute to your instance and check where latency spikes begin.

5. Collect a 5-minute traceroute for support

Support can only investigate routing issues if you provide traceroute data.

Requirements:

• Run traceroute for at least 5 minutes.
• Target the subdomain of your instance.
• Keep the instance online during the test.
• Use a tool like WinMTR (recommended on Windows).

After the test completes, submit the traceroute results in a support ticket for further analysis.