If you’re a fan of first-person shooter games, like Call of Duty, you know the importance of Internet speed. A mere second can make or break a game. It can mean the difference between a sweet headshot, a toe shot, or just no shot at all, if it’s bad enough. Not having a decent Internet connection and speed can ruin the game; sending you into a frustrated spiral of hopelessness and anger.

This article covers Internet speeds at varying times of the day while playing the new Call of Duty: WWII on the PlayStation 4. Our ISP is Spectrum, formerly known as Time Warner Cable, and our particular plan is a middle-of-the-line one at a minimum of 60 Mbps (according to Spectrum.com, not our own tests). We collected the data using Bandwidthplace.com, as well as a competing speed test provider. We also attempted to do speed tests on the PS4 itself, but learned that doing so boots you from the game, so take those results with a grain of salt.

One thing to note is that speeds while playing will vary greatly due to server loads and network traffic; different times of the day will always have differing results.

Internet Speeds before Playing CoD: WWII (Spectrum)

We ran a few speed tests before even picking up the controller, and found the following:

As you can see, the results varied. While our speed tests kept within a small range, the competing site showed far under the minimum speed in both time slots (again, according to Spectrum), but also over the minimum later in the night. So while the competing sites were all over the place, our tests stayed about as steady as our aim (sorry, just had to do it!).

Immediately after running the initial speed tests, we played the game and ran a few more at varying intervals. The results of those tests follow.

Internet Speeds (Spectrum) – CoD: WWII, Morning Hours

We ran the first set of tests around 9:00 a.m. until about noon. Between these times, we performed six speed tests while playing the game, and even though our Internet speeds are supposedly a minimum of 60 Mbps, we only reached a maximum of 20.02 Mbps using Bandwidthplace.com and 20.68 on the other site. The speed remained around 19-20 Mbps until noon. Although the download speeds were low, there wasn’t much lag to speak of. If there was a discrepancy in speed, we wouldn’t have known if we were judging solely on the smoothness of gameplay, KDR, and amount of lag.

In the afternoon hours, our speeds ran from 36.28 and 41.50 on Bandwidth Place and between 43.87 and 47.47 on the competing site (while playing).

As noted above in our “before” times, we played the game late at night as well.

Here’s a handy chart of our speeds at nighttime:

As you can see, the later it got, the faster our speeds. The discrepancy in speeds on the PS4 side probably has a lot to do with stopping mid-game to run a speed test (which did nothing for our KDR, and promptly booted us from the game).

Conclusion: Best Times to Play

Based on the results of the tests and on our particular Internet connection, the ideal time to play Call of Duty: WWII is late at night, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. In fact, later works better. If you’re a night owl and are addicted to first-person shooters, you’re in luck. If you do have to go to sleep at a reasonable time and if your Internet speeds reach at least 20 Mbps, you probably won’t have many issues — aside from yelling at the TV now and again.

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