Cox is one of the largest cable internet providers in the country, and it’s one of the only ones that offers a feature dedicated to online gaming: Elite Gamer promises to reduce lag when gaming online by automatically finding faster routes to whatever server you’re connecting with. The service costs an extra $7 per month — or nothing at all if you’re already spending $12 per month to rent the Cox Panoramic Wifi Gateway, a combination modem and router.
Elite Gamer works with a wide number of top PC games, including Battlefield 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dead by Daylight, Destiny 2, Diablo 3, Dota 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Escape from Tarkov, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto 5, League of Legends, Minecraft, Overwatch, PUBG, Rocket League, Valorant, World of Warcraft and more.
To use the service, you’ll need to download the Elite Gamer app to your PC, log in with a Cox username and password, and then launch a game. The service supports multiple sessions at once, so if you want to game together with a friend or a roommate, they can download the application and play at the same time as you with the same reductions in jitter and ping.
One caveat — if you opt to get Elite Gamer for free by renting the Cox Panoramic Wifi Gateway, then you should know that the Panoramic Wifi Gateway puts out a second, public Wi-Fi network separate from your home’s network that people nearby can use as hotspot. That feature is on by default, which is something I wasn’t crazy about in my review of Cox home internet service. Fortunately, you can turn that hotspot off by going to cox.com/myprofile and signing in with your Cox credentials.
Read the CNET review of Cox home internet.
