sat in his dim apartment, the only light coming from the glowing logo of his old, fan-whirring laptop. For years, he’d been an outsider to the worlds his friends inhabited—vast digital landscapes of 4K textures and lightning-fast reactions—all because his hardware was stuck in a bygone era.
- Switch to wired Ethernet (most effective).
- Reboot modem/router and Shadow client.
- Move closer to Wi‑Fi AP or use 5 GHz band; minimize interference.
- Enable QoS on router and prioritize the Shadow client’s traffic or UDP ports used by the service.
- Temporarily stop background uploads (cloud backups, torrents, updates).
- Test different DNS (e.g., Google/Cloudflare) if name resolution delays are suspected.
- If latency/route issues persist, contact ISP and provide traceroute results; ask about peering to Shadow’s region.
- Try a VPN only if ISP routing is poor — VPN can help route around bad peering but often increases latency.
According to Shadow’s official support, your connection should meet these baseline specs: