Online gaming has created a few different income opportunity levels, ranging from getting a bit of extra money for enjoying your hobby to fighting for the top spot in gaming competitions. One of the best ways to get into the online gaming business outside of a big win is starting slow from a home office, but as you increase your viewership and quality, you may outgrow the basic home tech options. Here's an overview of how a home office focused on gaming can work, and how to tweak it for the best cost and efficiency balance.

Reducing Lag At The Basic Level

There are two different meanings to the term lag that are similar, but rooted in entirely different causes. 

The first definition is related to the computer industry meaning, which is just a delay in network performance. As an online gamer, your gameplay relies on small, information-jammed packets of information to constantly travel between you and the game server. A delay in these packets means slower responses, such as pressing a button for an attack, but having to wait through an awkward delay.

If your internet is too slow, or if there are a lot of errors on your network, these packets may not make it to the server on time. Packets sent from your computer to the game server are covered by your internet's upload speed, while packets from the server to your computer are part of the download.

For simplicity's sake, upload and download are two different channels that operate separately inside one big internet capacity pipe. Failure with the general pipe can cause both upload and download to fail, or specific errors can cause problems for specifically the upload or the download.

System performance lag is different only in that it doesn't involve your network. If you're running too many programs, have a virus, or if your computer's parts aren't strong enough, your game won't be able to run as quickly as it needs to for a good experience.

Games are programs/applications, and work like any other programs/applications when it comes to resource use. If there's barely enough resources, the game will perform at a slower speed. It'll still work, but the performance will be choppy.

Network Management For Gamers

For system lag, the key is to remove any viruses or upgrade your computer. You have full control of this depending on your level of spending, but network issues are partially out of your control. Focus on what you can change first.

Monitor your network traffic. It's possible to multitask on the network while gaming with high-demand downloads and uploads, such as watching a streaming video, participating in video chat, or downloading/uploading large files. However, you need to know how much is too much for your network.

Understanding the download speeds for your specific internet plan can help you figure out what others in the household can do while you're gaming, and whether you need an internet speed increase. The top-tier gaming situations call for internet to be completely unused except for the game, but a starting game professional can handle some multitasking.

Make sure your equipment can handle the demand. Modems and routers can overheat, fail, or simply become too old, so get a network administrator's advice on your current gear. Contact a network management professional to discuss your network situation and establish online gaming dominance.