Hi my name is Chris and this is Battle(non)sense
Your experience in games like Fortnite, Battlefield,
PUBG or any other online multiplayer game,
strongly depends on the quality of your connection
to the server.
A ping of more than 75ms will already result
in noticeable lag.
And latency variation or packet loss will
result in rubber banding
or that your shots don’t register.
So, what can you do to improve the quality
of your connection.
There are services like Haste, WTFast and
Outfox,
which try to eliminate all these issues.
WTFast even wants to allow you to
“Experience Online Gaming Without Lag”.
Which is just marketing nonsense really, as
you will always have at least a bit of lag
when you play over the internet.
So how do they try to improve the quality
of your connection to the game server.
I live here in Austria.
Now let’s say that I want to play a game which hosts
its game servers here,
in a data center in Ireland.
It would be great if there was a direct connection
between my home and that data center,
but that’s not how the internet works.
My data must pass through multiple hops before
it then reaches the game server.
How many?
Well that depends on the routing that you,
the players, have no control over.
This is done by your Internet Service Provider
and the internet backbone providers that they
are working with.
Now as you can imagine, more hops between
you and the game server
will not only increase the lag, 
but also the risk of packet loss.
This is where those services like Haste, WTFast
and Outfox come in.
They will use their own servers and private
routes,
to provide games with a faster or
shorter route to the game server.
This is also one of the biggest differences
between these services and a VPN,
since when you use a VPN all data will be passed to the VPN server,
while Hast, WTFast and Outfox will only re-route the traffic of the game
that you play, while you are playing it.
So, these services aim to reduce lag, latency variation and packet loss,
by proving games with a faster path to the game server.
And I am sure that you already noticed the
catch here.
They are only able to improve the quality
of your connection to the server,
if they can offer something that is better than what your internet service provider is doing.
If your connection looks like this,
then none
of these services will lower your lag.
They will do the opposite.
Now let’s take a closer look at these services.
Sadly, Haste is not available outside of North America,
which is why I was only able to test
WTFast and Outfox.
But my verdict also applies to Haste, as well
as all the other, similar services.
So, after you installed Outfox you don’t
need to configure anything.
It will automatically detect the game you
play.
If that game is supported by Outfox, then
it will determine if it can provide a better
path to the server than your ISP can.
In this case here Outfox noticed that it can’t
improve my connection to the server,
and so it simply leaves it alone.
In this example here, Outfox tells me that
it improved my connection by 83%
as I now have a ping of 18ms instead of more than 100ms to that game server.
However, when we take a look at the network
graph that is built into Battlefield 1,
then we can clearly see that I have a ping of 106ms to the game server.
Which is not a surprise as it is located on
the East Coast of the United States of America,
while I am here in Austria.
Those 18ms that you see here, is my ping to
the Outfox Server located in Frankfurt.
So, something goes very wrong here inside
of Outfox as it fails to determine my ping
to the game server.
When I disable Outfox and then join the exact same
server again,
then the network graph shows a latency of 104ms.
Which means that even though Outfox thought
that it could improve my connection by 83%,
it actually added a few ms to my ping.
I have repeated these tests with CS:GO and
Overwatch,
since these are supported by Outfox,
and come with a powerful network graph
that provides some solid data 
on my connection to the server.
In every case where Outfox though that it
could improve my connection,
it actually caused a minor delay increase,
while it reported that it improved my connection.
Another issue that I noticed with Outfox and
Battlefield 1 specifically,
was that it does not notice when I switch servers.
When I first joined a server in Germany
and then switch to another one in a different country or even on another continent,
Outfox still showed that I was connected to that game server in Germany.
I always had to restart the game to get Outfox
to evaluate my connection to the new server.
Another issue was that with Outfox enabled
it would sometimes take several attempts to
join a server,  if I had a ping of more than
100ms to that server.
Servers to which I had a ping of more than
200ms, I could not join at all.
Not that I want to play on such servers,
but I tried to test if it could improve my connection
to servers very far away.
But instead Battlefield 1 told me that my
connection does not meet the requirements
to connect to that server.
WTFast works a bit differently.
It does not automatically detect the game
that you play.
Instead you type the title of the game into
the search box
and then launch the game from within the application.
Or at least it tries to launch the game, as
it failed to launch Overwatch in my tests.
But when this happens then you just have to
launch the game manually,
and WTFast will detect it then.
Now with WTFast enabled, you can pretty much
forget using the server browser in Battlefield 1,
as you now get insanely high pings here.
And just like with Outfox, Battlefield 1 does
not allow me to join servers which are far away.
Again, I don’t want to play on servers which
are on the other side of the earth,
I just tried this to test if this service would reduce
my ping to servers which are very far away.
Now, in this example here WTFast tells me
that it improved my connection by 21%.
Instead of 125ms ping I now have 99ms thanks
to that service.
However, when we take a look at the Network
Graph built into Battlefield 1,
then we see a latency of 116ms not 99ms.
And when I join the exact same server again
with WTFast disabled,
then I get a latency of 104ms.
So WTFast did not lower my ping to that server
by 21% or 16ms,
it increased my ping by 12ms.
This wasn’t limited to Battlefield 1, as
I noticed the same in CS:GO and Overwatch.
I also tried to manually choose a network
route inside of WTFast.
But the results were always the same.
It could not improve my connection, even when
it said it did.
Now let me be crystal clear here.
I do not say that these services internally
provide false data.
It is very, very tricky for these applications
to measure these values
and provide 100% accurate data.
What I want you to take away from this,
is that you cannot fully trust what these applications report,
because of how problematic it is for
these services to gather accurate data on
the connection to the server.
Especially when you consider that game servers
running on
AWS, Azure or the Google Cloud Platform
do not even respond to an ICMP echo
request.
So, Haste, Outfox, WTFast and similar services,
are absolutely able to lower your lag,
latency variation and packet loss.
But only if they can provide you with a better,
faster path to the server
than your Internet Service Provider can.
If your connection already looks like this,
then you will not benefit from such services.
Which is why none of them are able to improve
my connection to the game servers.
So, the only way for you to find out if these
services will help you, is by using them.
Luckily you can test them for free.
So, I want to encourage you to try them out
and see how they work for you.
But don’t trust the reports of these applications
too much or judge them by how a game feels.
You better test these services with games
like Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, CS:GO,
Overwatch or Team Fortress 2 as these come
with a built in Network Graph that tells you
the hard facts about your ping, latency variation
and packet loss.
Now what else can you do to improve the quality
of your connection to the server.
First and foremost, do not use WiFi 
for online gaming.
It’s prone to interference and congestion
as the 2.4GHz band is highly saturated
and most access points and WiFi routers can only
talk to one wireless client at a time.
If you have to use WiFi for online gaming,
then you should make sure to use either channel
1, 6 or 11 as these are the only non-overlapping
channels on the 2.4Ghz band.
Which has better range and penetration than
the 5GHz band,
which is why you might choose 2.4Ghz over 5Ghz
depending on your building and the distance between the access point and the client.
You should also do a WiFi scan of your environment
to find the channel with the lowest utilization.
If there are already 10 networks on channel
1 and only 2 on channel 6,
then choose channel 6.
Do not trust the auto setting for the channel
selection on your wifi router or access point.
Another thing that you can do to improve your
WiFi is invest in a MU-MIMO Access Point.
These are able to simultaneously communicate
with multiple clients,
which greatly reduces latency and 
the risk of packet loss.
Sadly they are also very expensive.
And lastly, you should invest in a router
which does not suffer from BufferBloat
as that results in massive ping spikes of
several hundred milliseconds.
You can find out more about that in the video
that I have linked to in the description down below.
So that’s all for today.
I hope that you enjoyed this video,
and if you have tried one of these services then
please leave a comment here as I am very interested
to hear how they worked for you.
If you enjoyed this video, then it would be
great if you could support me on Patreon as
YouTubes ad revenue is sadly not enough anymore
to run a niche channel like mine.
Without the awesome support that I get from
my patrons,
Battle(non)sense would not exists anymore.
You can find a link to my Patreon in the description
down below,
where you will also find links to my social accounts
in case that you want to stay up to date
on the videos that I am working on.
So, if you enjoyed this video then please
give it a like, subscribe for more
and I hope to see you next time!
Until then, have a nice day and take care,
my name is Chris and this was Battle(non)sense.
