Starting with PS2, Sony consoles slowly started becoming online compatible. This meant that your best friend didn’t need to stay over at your house to play together on split-screen.
Nowadays, you can easily invite your mates to a lobby on your PS5 and start playing the game of your choice. Your experience will vary depending on your network quality, and a bad one may make it unbearable.
Most players choose to connect their PS5s to their routers through Wi-Fi. While it’s a convenient solution, your network quality will depend on the distance between your console and your router alongside your walls’ thickness. If you’ve been struggling to stay connected to games or experiencing slow download speeds, then it may be time that you boost your Wi-Fi and connection quality.
Here’s everything you can do to have a better gaming experience on your PS5 with a better connection.
Change your PS5’s DNS
Generally speaking, even if you’re aren’t using a DNS server, you’ll be using the default DNS of your internet service provider (DNS). While most of them will be just fine, some DNS servers may have a slower initial response time compared to the more commercially available ones.
This may cause your connection to suffer, and you may experience slow download speeds alongside connectivity issues. While you can always call your ISP about your situation, changing your DNS will always be a faster solution.
To change your DNS on PS5, you’ll need to:
- Navigate to Settings.
- Choose Network and select Set Up Internet Connection.
- Once inside, pick your preferred connection method and choose Advanced Settings.
- Change your DNS Settings to manual and adjust your Primary and Secondary DNS servers according to your liking.
- Two of the most preferred DNS servers belong to CloudFlare and Google. For CloudFlare, you’ll need to enter “1.1.1.1” without the quotation marks for your primary DNS and “1.0.0.1” for your secondary DNS address.
- You can try out Google DNS by entering “8.8.8.8” for your Primary setting and “8.8.4.4” for the secondary DNS.
Try out port forwarding
Though this method can be relatively advanced if you don’t know your way around your router’s interface, it can yield the fastest results when it comes to increasing your connection quality. Port forwarding is a process that allows users to customize the way their consoles send and receive packages from a game’s servers or the internet.
In any case where the connection path configured by your ISP-between your router and the game server- is flooded with gamers or faulty, port forwarding will help you establish a better connection.
Each router model will have a different user interface, so you’ll need to perform a Google search to try out port forwarding with your exact router model. You’ll also need the TCP and UDP ports of the game you’d like to play since you’ll need to configure them on your router’s interface.
Make sure your Wi-Fi signal isn’t too weak to begin with
If you’re playing too far away from your router or live in a house with thick walls, your Wi-Fi signals may be beyond repair. Run a couple of speed tests next to your router and in the room with your PS5.
If the results are significantly worse in the room with PS5, then you may need to take one of the following measures.
Try placing your PS5 and router closer to each other
It may sound simple, but even getting them a room closer could make a difference. Your PS5 will start picking up stronger signals, meaning your connection speed and quality will improve.
Connect your PS5 and router with an Ethernet cable
Even if you put your router and PS5 next to each other, it’ll be impossible to achieve a cabled connection quality. If you can somehow pull off the cable management side of things, you should consider connecting your PS5 and router with an Ethernet cable.
This means that you’ll be ditching Wi-Fi, but it’s also the best way of fixing any Wi-Fi connection problems.
Invest in a new router
If you can’t get your router and PS5 closer or connect them with an Ethernet cable, then you may need to invest in a more robust router.
A more powerful router will dish out stronger signals, meaning the signal quality increase all over your house. If you’d like to avoid purchasing an overkill router, try measuring your house and check out routers’ signal range before pulling the trigger on any of them.
Go through the simple troubleshooting steps
Sometimes the simplest of solutions can do the trick for you. If your connection has just started acting up and was working fine before, then going through some of the most straightforward troubleshooting steps can help you fix your Wi-Fi problems.
Reset your router
You may have been connecting to your home router for a couple of days without problems, but even they can have small hiccups. These setbacks can cause your connection quality to suffer or even make it impossible for you to connect to Wi-Fi with your PS5.
A simple router reset should be enough to fix such problems most of the time, but we also recommend resetting your PS5 to make sure you get a clean start on all bases.
Make sure your Wi-Fi signals isn’t being held hostage by other processes or users
Routers work in mysterious ways. If you’re sharing your connection with anybody, you’ll know that even opening a YouTube video in HD quality can cause your connection to stutter momentarily. This is because routers tend to prioritize more urgent tasks over stable ones.
These can add up, however, and cause a performance drop on the Wi-Fi signals that your PS5 receives.
You can ask anyone who may be doing anything bandwidth extensive to stop and see if that fixes your problem, or you can manually adjust the amount of bandwidth available for their MAC addresses through your router.
This process will be different for every router brand, meaning you’ll need to research for a guide specifically for your router or take a look at your user’s manual.
Readjusting how your router distributes bandwidth and setting caps will allow you to retain the majority of your bandwidth, meaning you should get a more stable connection.
It doesn’t have to be users all the time, either. There may be some download processes you may have started and forgotten about. Apps updating on your phone, your PC downloading updates, or even your PS5 installing game files in the background without your knowledge can cause your internet speed to struggle.
Go over every suspected device to make sure there aren’t any processes that are clogging your bandwidth. Turning off any will boost your connection quality immediately.
To see if there are any background downloads on PS5, you’ll need to follow these steps:
- Press the PlayStation button on your controller and bring up the Control Center.
- There’ll be a downfacing arrow if you have any active downloads, and if you don’t see it, it’ll mean that you don’t have any active downloads.
- If you see the icon but can’t remember starting a download process, navigate to any game that’s downloading and press the Options button on your controller while hovering on them to select Pause All.
Consider upgrading your internet plan
The taste and the quality of the food heavily depend on how good the ingredients are. The same applies to your Wi-Fi and connection quality. If you have a slow internet plan to work with, nothing you’ll do will be enough to make it faster.
Upgrading your internet plan will be the best way to increase your connection speed, but there are few boxes you’ll need to check before pulling the trigger.
Ask your ISP if your infrastructure and router can support your new plan before deciding on a new internet plan. If it can’t, upgrading your plan won’t be enough to increase your download speeds.
You can still ask your ISP to send in a professional to your home and take the necessary steps to increase your internet infrastructure quality, which would make you eligible for an upgrade.
If you have an old router that would support such speeds, then you can also ask your ISP to assign one and finance it through your internet bill, or you can search one for your needs.
