Ping

It wasn't me!

For online gaming, how do I go about lowering my ping? I keep getting kicked from servers because it's too high.

f1refox

Your ping is determent on the server your on and your bb connection. Try pick sites that are in Ireland are England. What bb server provider are you using. What kind of pings are you getting?.

kippy

Okay-what advertised internet connection speed do you have and who is your provider? (Eircom 2 meg, Irish BB 4 meg etc)
Are you using the connection exclusively on your own PC and not sharing the connection with other people in your house?
Are you downloading or uploading files when you are connected?
What are your stats when you run a BB speed test here? www.irishisptest.ie

It may not be possible to improve your PING times....without changing provider or method of connection....(Provider)

It wasn't me!

Pinged a server I was playing on and my average was 32ms. I'm with Torque 1MB.

christophicus

32ms is not bad at all,infact it is quite good if im not mistaken??

It wasn't me!

Exactly, hence my confusion at having very bad ping while gaming.

christophicus

Well what is your latency while gaming???

Peanut

Is your ping consistent?

You may be getting a good ping most of the time, but if it drops out then you may get kicked from the server. You can do ping -t to do a continuous ping, then see how many dropped packets you have at the end, ideally none, but you could probably live with about 2% dropped packets depending on the pattern.

If you are having no dropped packets, or 'spikes' in response time, then you need to talk to your ISP, tell them what you are doing and ask them can they do anything to improve the situation.

But make sure first that there nothing else running in the background that is eating up your bandwidth.

pbirney

kippy wrote:

Okay-what advertised internet connection speed do you have and who is your provider? (Eircom 2 meg, Irish BB 4 meg etc)
Are you using the connection exclusively on your own PC and not sharing the connection with other people in your house?
Are you downloading or uploading files when you are connected?
What are your stats when you run a BB speed test here? www.irishisptest.ie

Kippy, the URL should read www.irishisptest.com

ikoonman

Can your problem be with router configuration, such as unset port forwarding/triggering that the games may require to work ok?

Dunno, just throwing ideas around.

iggyman

actually boys im in a similer situation...when i play online games such as enemy territory every 30 seconds or so i get ping spikes and it rises up to the 600-100 range and the game is unplayable for about 5-10 seconds until it drops back down ..

im currently with utv 2mb package..
i dont share my connection with any one else..its used only by this computer and i dont be uploading or downloadin anything when i play..it only started from around early march this year.. last year it was fine....

can anyone help with this please..??

kin9pin

iggyman wrote:

actually boys im in a similer situation...when i play online games such as enemy territory every 30 seconds or so i get ping spikes and it rises up to the 600-100 range and the game is unplayable for about 5-10 seconds until it drops back down ..

im currently with utv 2mb package..
i dont share my connection with any one else..its used only by this computer and i dont be uploading or downloadin anything when i play..it only started from around early march this year.. last year it was fine....

can anyone help with this please..??

Same happened to me with UTV, which is why I went with NTL

Illkillya

One word: netsettings. Unless the server you're on is some guy's listen server, then the reason your ping is going to 600 is probably because your connect is getting flooded. I think the command in ET is /rate 15000... not sure. Your upload could be getting flooded too, I think the command to vary this in ET is cl_maxpackets. I don't know what your upload speed is, but if its > 128k then your cl_maxpackets setting should be set at 100 or 125, and if its <128k then cl_maxpackets should be at a lower setting, such as 60. 'snaps' should be set to 40. Again, I don't know for sure if these are the exact commands, but google will help you if they're not.

To rule out the server, have a go on Blacknight's Irish ET server... I don't have the IP on me, but you'll find it in All Seeing Eye. If your ping is still going very high in game with rate at 15000, then there are some other possibilities. One is that it could be related to a bug in the q3 engine (there are several) which would require some tweaking to get over, but more likely it would be caused by dodginess in your broadband connection - I don't know about Torque, but in general, wireless broadband connections can be troublesome in online gaming.

In command prompt, do "ping -t serverIP -l 1000" - this will continuously ping the server (until you stop it with ctrl-c) but with larger packets than usual - since sometimes wireless connections will have trouble sending larger packets, when it would have no problems with 64 byte packets. Leave it run for awhile, because you might be getting intermittent ping spikes (e.g. when a big lorry drives past).

PcP

The problem that iggyman is describing is a UTV problem, well documented with them too. I've been on BT for just over two weeks and no more ping problems and lagouts.
FYI, changing snaps in ET won't change anything, ET servers run at 20 regardless of client settings. Rate at 15000 might help but I always found it just made everyone unhittable, like the hitboxes just dont register anything.
On 2M/256 package you should be using rate 25000 and maxpackets 100. Maxpackets will only go as high as your current framerate though, if you framerate is dropping then so is the number of frames you send.

Illkillya

Most people will get 125fps solid, in which case you should always have 100 or 125 maxpackets if your upload can handle it. And it is always better to have higher setting for snaps (such as 40) because some servers will change the default sv_fps value, to 25 or to 30, and snaps 20 will cause serious problems, while snaps 40 will work for all values of sv_fps.

PcP

I didn't know that about snaps, thought all servers ran at 20.
I still reckon iggy's problem is UTV though. I'm using the same config and netsettings I had before (same hardware here too) but have had none of the regular lagouts I had with UTV.

iggyman

thanx illkillya and pcp ...so it looks by the looks of things that im not the only one with this problem..thats a bit better for me to hear cause i tought it was my connection ,line quality or something....ill try them commands out now after i post this..if the problem still persists at least all i know i have to do is change isp's ..the main reason why im worryin bout this is because wen i get a ps3 and playin online i dont wanna be playin with these lag spikes....well thanx lads..ill post here again with me results..

mneylon

pbirney wrote:

Kippy, the URL should read www.irishisptest.com

Whoops! I've fixed that now so both will work