Can switching to an NBN provider like Superloop improve online gaming performance? These are the key factors to consider when choosing a new gaming-grade internet plan

If you feel like you’re always playing online games at a disadvantage, your internet connection may well be to blame. While there are numerous factors that affect your connection quality, many can be influenced by your internet provider. Superloop has won awards for its high-value, gamer-friendly internet plans and enhancements, including two from our sister site TechRadar in its 2026 Australian PC Awards, where it earned the accolades for Best Gaming NBN Provider as well as Best High-speed NBN Provider overall.

Superloop also ranked second overall for Australian download speed in Steam’s Download Stats (August 2026), and has even been recognised by global internet-giant Speedtest.net being awarded the Fastest Fixed Network in Australia¹ across 2025 and in Q1 and Q2 of 2026. So, it’s worth investigating whether a switch could improve your online gaming.

TL;DR

● Reducing internet latency (or ping time) is a major goal for gamers. Ideally, you need a combination of a high-quality internet provider and an up-to-date router to help minimise or eliminate bottlenecks.

● Households with shared internet can get congested, which can negatively affect latency and ping speeds. Having a fast connection that provides enough bandwidth during your household’s peak periods (such as the evening) is essential to keep your gaming data flowing smoothly.

● Games, updates and operating systems are ballooning in size. Superloop addresses this with fast plans and up to five free speed upgrade days every month on select plans.

● Always-on internet connections can sometimes slow down over time due to a variety of factors. Superloop’s app makes it easy to instantly refresh your connection.

How to tell if your online games need a speed upgrade

The performance of your home internet connection can be frustrating to troubleshoot — and when you have problems, it’s often the case that your connection works fine for some tasks but is unpredictably erratic with others. Gaming is one of the most performance-sensitive activities you can ask of your broadband connection — and when you’re in a virtual firefight, any amount of lag or excessive ping time can mean the difference between life and death on a personal level, and victory or defeat for a whole team. If you’re constantly dying without knowing why, or watching your bullets bounce off opponents before they walk up to you and stab you, then you’re suffering from lag and need a better ping time.

Two telltale signs that high latency is undermining your online gaming performance are connection drop-outs and rubber-banding – where your character or vehicle jumps back and forth while your computer tries to re-sync with the game server. This can be particularly irksome if you’re trying to hit an apex in a racing game, or line up a shot in a shooter.

How to check your internet connection for latency bottlenecks

More often than not, poor latency in games comes from one of two sources — either your internet connection, or your in-home local network (i.e. the wired and wireless connections provided by your modem-router).

In some cases it could also be both, or potentially even the gaming server you’re connecting to, but either way there are some simple tests you can run to help narrow down what the cause of lag is.

Note that before you begin, you’ll want to make sure nobody else in your household is using the connection for intensive activities.

Speed test #1 – Direct to your internet provider

The first of these is to do a general internet speed test. Most service providers should have a dedicated page on their site (for example, Superloop’s ‘Check Your Internet Speed’ page) with an online tool that you can run to check the first part of your connection – the bit between your home and your provider. To help eliminate potential sources of interference, if you’re running the test via Wi-Fi we recommend ensuring that your test device (such as your laptop or phone) is in close proximity to your modem-router or, if possible, plugged directly in via a wired Ethernet cable.

After running the test, you should end up with results that look something like this:

The key metric here is ping and, as you’re testing the connection between your home and your provider, this should ideally be under 10ms. In the test of our Superloop connection above, you can see it’s a very healthy 4ms. If your result is above 10ms, it’s likely that the bottleneck is either your local network (often an older modem-router), or the NBN cabling between you and your provider (the copper cabling in older technologies like FTTN and FTTC can slow things down, especially if they’re physically degraded).

Speed test #2 – Dedicated gaming servers

If your provider ping speed looks strong, the next step is to run some tests to dedicated game servers — you can use sites such as Game Server PING to check a specific game or games. Depending on where a game server is located (many Australian ones are run out of Sydney) in most big games with Oceania servers you should expect a ping of between 10-40ms if you have a fibre NBN connection, such as FTTP or HFC. Note that physical distance plays a fairly large role in determining whether you’re closer to 10ms or 40ms on that scale – if the server you’re testing is located in Sydney and you’re in Melbourne, this can add 10ms or more to ping times, and if you’re in Perth the distance is going to have an even bigger impact.

Speed test #3 – Physical factors

If both your provider and gaming server speed-test results look good, the last test we’d suggest trying is to physically move your testing device to be in close proximity to your gaming device(s). If you have a console plugged into your TV, place your testing phone or laptop as close to the console as possible, then run the same provider and gamer-server tests from this new spot or spots.

How to read the results

Now that you’ve collated all these results, let’s dive into how to read them – and what you can do to fix them if they aren’t up to scratch.

If you’re experiencing poor latency right from the first test (the connection between your home and the local phone exchange), this is likely caused by physical factors. If you’re on one of those older NBN connection technologies, such as FTTN or FTTC, the best remedy is to get your connection physically upgraded to use fibre to the premises (FTTP). NBN Co will let you upgrade for free in many locations, and this is ordered through NBN providers directly — you can check your eligibility to upgrade via Superloop here, for example.

If your ping results started wavering from the gaming-servers tests, the bottleneck is likely your provider — and the remedy here is to switch to a quality telco like Superloop that has taken the time to optimise its network for gaming. See below for more details on selecting a good provider for gaming.

Finally, if your latency started spiking in the final test (moving physically closer to your gaming devices) then the source is likely your in-home network – which usually means your modem-router. You can potentially improve this by moving your current router to a spot that’s physically closer to your gaming devices and/or placed physically higher up (e.g. on top of a tall piece of furniture or high shelf), however if your router is more than 3 years old it’s probably time to consider an upgrade to something newer. We’d recommend investing in a Wi-Fi 7 model, such as one of the Amazon Eero 7 options that Superloop offers at a low cost with select NBN plans.

How to choose an NBN provider that’s gamer-friendly

If you’ve determined your latency issues stem from your internet provider, you’ll be looking to switch — but how do you find one that’s optimised for gaming? One key element to look for is a provider that owns and maintains its own infrastructure. Unlike some other NBN providers, Superloop has built out its own fibre backhaul network, which connects directly to all 121 NBN Points of Interconnect to reduce unnecessary network hops, and keep web traffic moving as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means its internet connections have inherently low pings, suiting gamers. It offers numerous plans to suit a variety of needs and budgets, including the NBN 500 Family Max² and NBN 1000 Lightspeed² plans that are great choices for gaming (and often carry competitive introductory discounts).

Superloop also rates highly for consistent, fast performance during the 7pm to 11pm peak period as defined by the ACCC – which, understandably, also happens to be one of the most popular times for online gaming. That means peak performance when you need it most.

Superloop’s typical evening speeds are very competitive, with the ACCC Quarterly Broadband Performance Data (June 2026) rating Superloop’s NBN 500² plan averaging 500.3Mbps download speeds during the busy hours, while Superloop’s NBN 750² plans averaged 720.2Mbps.

In that same report, Superloop delivered 98.7% of its advertised plan speeds overall, placing it in the top five NBN providers Australia wide.

How Superloop can improve your overall gaming experience

Gaming in 2026 isn’t just about latency and ping speeds, of course. With the size of both game installs and patches continuing to grow (it’s not uncommon for a major AAA title to be 150GB or more in size) download speed can make a huge difference to how much time you actually get to spend gaming versus waiting for your games to install or update. The table below shows how long a large 150GB download takes on different NBN speed tiers.

Having enough overall bandwidth to support your household during peak usage periods is also essential when it comes to keeping games running smoothly online. A basic 50Mbps² connection, for example, can easily become choked if there are too many users trying to do bandwidth-intensive activities simultaneously.

In addition to high value plans across all its tiers, Superloop offers a unique feature on its NBN 500² and NBN 750² plans that gamers will love. At any time during the month you can activate the My Speed Boost feature to upgrade your speed to NBN 1000² for 24 hours – perfect for new game releases, intensive gaming weekends, or if there’s a critically important esports match you’re competing in. You’ll receive five of these Speed Upgrade Days every calendar month, and any you don’t use are automatically rolled over up to a maximum of 30 days. Need an extra one? Extra days cost just AU$2 each.

My Speed Boost can be switched on via Superloop’s easy-to-use app. The app also monitors your connection, advises you of planned and unplanned outages, and lets you troubleshoot internet problems or even reset your connection with the Refreshify feature.

As we mentioned previously, Superloop also offers two high-quality Amazon Eero routers on its plans – the Eero 7 on speeds up to NBN 1000², and the Eero Pro 7 on NBN 2000². Both use the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, which can provide wireless speeds that rival cabled equivalents for reliability and latency. Better yet, those routers come at a lower cost.

Improve your gaming connection now

Ultimately, whatever type of gamer you are, if your connection is laggy and making you uncompetitive, Superloop – winner of TechRadar’s Best Gaming NBN Provider Award for 2026 – has a great choice of high-value plans to suit your needs, plus plenty of benefits that other rivals don’t offer.

Check out the full NBN range at Superloop to find a plan that’s right for your needs.