is there any known way of lowering lag?

Question

I have been getting a ton of lag for the past 10 games and it is getting very annoying. so is there any known way of lowering it? is it my connection or the MW3 servers?

Answer 1

You only connect to the servers to find games (or when you're hosting, to upload statistics, but it still shouldn't affect your game lag), so your connection to MW3 servers isn't the issue. It's all about finding good hosts. There are a couple of things you can do to help finding less laggy hosts:

1. Make sure your NAT type is 'open'. This means you can receive incoming connections in addition to sending outgoing ones (NAT types 'moderate' or 'strict' do not allow incoming). Try this link or any of the ones you find on Google for instructions on opening up your NAT.
2. Pay attention to the ping shown when attempting to match games. It starts out trying to match < 50ms ping games, then moves up. I usually bail out and try again in a few seconds or switch game modes if I can't find a <50ms game.
3. Geographically closest hosts are generally the least laggy, so try to play at the same time that people around you do. Usually this will be between 5-10pm local time.
4. Unfortunately it's harder to match games if you play in a party. More people in your party means more free slots have to be open, and there are always fewer games with lots of open player slots. Also, hosts that match well for other members of your party will not always be the best match for you. So if the lag is really getting to you go solo.
5. Use a wired connection to your router instead of wireless. This will help eliminate packetloss on your end.
6. Any downloads or web surfing or anything that uses the internet connection will contribute to lag on your end. Unless you have QoS set up on your router AND at your ISP endpoint, which is never the case, extra traffic will affect your perceived lag (even when your connection isn't saturated). So avoid having other computers connected to the network while you're playing.

Answer 2

Infinity Ward removed a lot of the lag-mitigating features from Black Ops (most notably local only host searching), instead giving "artificial lag" to hosts. However there are a few steps you can take to get a better connection.

The first method with the best results, is to set up a dedicated port-forward for the game. portforwarding.com does an excellent job at providing instructions for doing this, if a bit tedious, and can significantly improve lag for bad connections.

The easier method is to disable theatre mode recording from the options menu, as this attempts to save what is going on in-game while trying to keep up with the actual match at the same time. And removing that extra factor can free up a lot of bandwidth.

And lastly, make sure you aren't downloading anything, or using any internet heavy services at the same time as playing.

Answer 3

The #1 thing you can do to control lag is to limit how much other traffic is on your internet connection. Things like streaming Netflix, downloading files or games on Steam, torrents, etc will all cause very serious lag.

Other than that, you can try exiting the lobby you are in and searching for another game; it might be that you're in a lobby with players who are far away from you (latency-wise).

Some people say having your Xbox on a wireless connection to your router is worse than a wired connection; I haven't noticed this personally.

If you're not already Open NAT (ie, it is restricted or closed) you should change your router settings to fix this, see the following Xbox.com article:

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live/troubleshoot/connection-issues/nat-type-strict

You could also try switching Internet Service Providers (ISPs) although that's a more extreme measure.

Answer 4

The answer is no. The latency compensation is widely believed to be to blame here. Much like BlOps, your success is at the mercy of their net code. For some unfathomable reason, they abandoned the awesome MW2 net code and changed it for the worse.

Your best solution is to go play BF3 or Gears 3. Both are on dedicated servers and work amazingly well. MW3 was going to be my game of the year and then I played it and realized I can't win a battle on my own: I can shoot first, hit a guy in the back or play amazingly well and still get owned because it has absolutely nothing to do with how good I am much of the time; it was more about how the latency compensation either worked or bent me over a sandbag.

At this point, they can't overhaul the net code, they can only tweak it. This means they can maaaaaybe make it incrementally better, but it's not going to ever be fixed. BlOps never got better through at least the first 3 months until I maxed and quit. I have no faith in IW/Act to fix this, if it's fixable. The latency is the biggest reason I'm selling this game.