Packet loss when battle starts (SOLVED / FIX)

Community Technical Support Crashes, Connection, Update Problems & Advice
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Quite often, when I start a battle, I have around 16–65% packet loss which last for half a minute or up to 5 minutes.
Sometimes it is not that bad but many times I have to wait a long time for “Processing operation” when i press “To battle” and when I finally spawn with my tank i got either 20-55% PL or 200+ Ping.

For me it is worst when I play Squadron Battles. Many times I have to wait in hangar when the battle starts. My teamates are in battle and I am sitting in hangar and can see in blurry that in the corner there are red PL numbers. A few members of our squadron have this problem too, but not as often.

Normally playing with 32-42 Ping. 0 PL% after few minutes in battle, after the issues settles.
What “fixes” the issue is using Mobile Hotspot, but I get 70-250 Ping…

What I already tried:

  • Updated router drivers
  • Updated all drivers on my pc (I’ve had this issue also on my previous PC)
  • Tried playing wtih WiFI and Ethernet cable, no difference, higher ping on WiFi

Is there any fix for this? I don’t want to use my phone to play WarThunder.

Solution / FIX :

If you are experiencing high Packet Loss (16–65%), long “Processing operation” delays when loading into battles, or sudden 200+ Ping spikes (especially on ISP networks like O2/Cetin or when using certain routers like Zyxel/OEMs), this guide can help you fix it.

This issue is often caused by poor ISP DNS routing to Gaijin’s servers and bad IPv6 route optimization.

THE FIX:

  1. Accessing Your Router Settings & Changing to Google IPv4 DNS
  • Open your web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.).
  • In the address bar at the top, type your router’s local gateway IP address (usually 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.138) and press Enter.
  • Log in to your router using your admin credentials (these are usually printed on a sticker at the bottom or back of your router if you haven’t changed them).
  • Navigate to your network configuration settings. Look for a section named Network Settings \rightarrow Broadband / WAN / Internet.
  • Find your active internet connection profile (e.g., VDSL, EthernetWAN, or PPPoE) and click Edit (or the pencil icon).
  • Scroll down to the DNS Server section:
  • Keep IP Address set to Obtain Automatically.
  • Change DNS Server mode to Static / Manual.
  • Set Primary DNS Server: 8.8.8.8
  • Set Secondary DNS Server: 8.8.4.4
  • Click Apply or Save.

⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ON IPv6 DNS: Do NOT manually set Google IPv6 DNS addresses in your router settings.

In many regions, routing War Thunder traffic over custom IPv6 DNS causes massive 50%+ Packet Loss and severe loading delays. Keep the IPv6 DNS Server setting in your router on Obtain IPv6 DNS Info Automatically.

  1. Disabling IPv6 in Windows 11

To prevent Windows from forcing game traffic through unoptimized IPv6 routes, disable IPv6 directly on your network adapter. (Don’t worry—all games, browsers, and streaming apps will work flawlessly over IPv4).

  1. Press Win + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog.
  2. Type ncpa.cpl and press Enter (this opens Network Connections).
  3. Right-click your active connection (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) and select Properties.
  4. In the list under “This connection uses the following items:”, find Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6).
  5. Uncheck the box next to Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6).
  6. Click OK to save the changes.
  1. Flush Your DNS Cache

To make sure your PC immediately drops old routes and starts using the new settings:

  1. Press the Win key, type cmd, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.
  2. Type the following command and press Enter:
    ipconfig /flushdns
  3. Restart War Thunder and test a few battles.

Hopefully, this guide helps anyone facing the same problem I had. I consulted Gemini—some suggestions worked, others didn’t—so I tried to make this guide as easy to understand as possible.
Thanks for the help @Alebang .

5 Likes
2

Usually i would shit on the gaijin servers but this seems to be a problem with the router, and it reminded me of something that also append to me until i decided to change some setting inside the router in the config page, if you want i can show you how to get in and maybe try to fix it that way.

1 Like
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That would be helpful. What do I have to do?

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well first you will need enter this on the browser
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this is the entrance to the settings in your router, it will ask you for the username and password, most of the time it is in the back of the router besides the wifi password usually it is admin/admin, admin/1234, 1234/1234, 1111/1111.

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5

Mine starts with 10, but I am there in the router settings.

6

Ok try to search something like this.
What i changed on the setting was the channel number to auto and the mode to 802.11ax in the 80hz band, tho this is the settings i use for wifi in the 5GHz band, try to use the wifi if you can to test this first and then use ethernet.
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7

Since I have different router (Zyxel) and I asked Gemini for help with finding what you told me to do, It said that my router operates in 802.11ax mode by default. But i changed the bandwith from 20/40Mhz to 20/40/80Mhz. I also noticed that next to this box is now “Current: 52/80 Mhz”

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I will try WiFi but I prefer not to play on it because the signal in my room is very bad, so I normally use Ethernet.

8

try to unmark this

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some routers have a setting where it will have only 1 wifi where both 2.4ghz and 5ghz coexist in the same place but they works as one, this will open more options.

And if the wifi signal is that bad we could also check things like the dhcp settings and also if the distance in the ethernet cable is too large that it maybe needs a hub.

9

We have router in the corner of the house, so few rooms benefit from the 5G, but the signal wont get far so the other rooms aparently use 2.4G. My room cannot get the 5G, I barely get any signal, like 1 bar maximum. So thats why i use Ethernet. I have WiFi extender near my room so i can get WiFi for my phone but it is not good for games. I cannot move the router to any better place unfortunately.

About ethernet cable, the cable i use is about 25 meters long.

10

ok the cable will not be a problem, i am also using this guide from Zyxel Web Interface Tutorials

i will search more things to know the interface of your router and what you can change that will actually work.

11

try to change the DNS servers to

Primary 8.8.8.8

Secondary 8.8.4.4

this is the google DNS usually works the best

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12

I was testing what we did before and:
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I was playing ARB 14.3 so the battles were quite quick.

So I dont know if it was really better or it is the same but I got less battles with high packet loss.

I will try the DNS now.

13

i have jst rage quitted for the same reason lol. i thought im the only one with this issue. btw i unfortunately suffer both high ping and PL loss.

1 Like
14

Well, first battle 60% PL after minute it went to 200 Ping 10% PL, then it went to 100 Ping 0 PL. I dont think anythng is changing.

15

Btw in which region do you play?

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So I think I fixed the problem. Thanks to your suggestion with Google servers and consultung some settings with Gemini.

The fix with Google servers made the connection better but sometimes I still had to wait longer to connect to battles.

The issue at least for me was IPv6 DNS. I’m from Czech republic and from what I gathered from Gemini, it seems that in many games using IPv6 is really bad, especialy in Czechia (maybe even EU).

So, according to you, I connected to Google DNS. Then I thought to try adding Google DNS IPv6 instead of using the automatic settings, but that resulted in 50% packet loss during every battle. Thanks to Gemini, I completely disabled IPv6 in Windows, and the problem is now resolved.

For some reason WarThunder was the only game on my PC that was trying to use IPv6.

So Thank you for your help @Alebang

1 Like