Lower ping times with slower connection, whut?

Dannysaurus

Not sure if this would be the right place for this, but this is gaming related in a way so here goes;

Recently I've moved houses from Lucan to Cabinteely, and the two houses having UPC and Eircom respectively. The former being a 25MB broadband and the latter merely capping out at 3 to 4MB. I play League of Legends often, and whilst having UPC, even with a much faster connection, I get from 90 to 150ms, which may sound miniscule, but has made playing with certain champions a no go because of the "no wiggle room" timing of spells.
Oddly enough, I'm getting sub 50ms whilst on Eircom even though it's a slower connection.
I don't get it :L Could someone explain why that might be?

Canis Lupus

DL speed isn't related to ping but someone better schooled on the tech side should be able to explain why exactly.

Major factor that affects ping (that you have power over) is server location and type. Dedicated server and closest to your location is best. ie picking Ireland/Europe. Server hosted in USA will have a higher ping for example.

Victor

Download speed is largely down to you and your ISP, ping is also dependent on the host.

Nody

Different ISPs have different connections between the networks to Internet; hence Eircom in your case has a better connection to the server then UPC had. There are also other things coming into it if you'd do a DSL to DSL comparison but that's not relevant for this discussion.

oxo_

You could use a VPN that's got better and closer route to the game server. Won't get the download speed on a VPN but for low ping times they're great.
I use VPNs for some gaming over UPC myself, massive difference at times.

Dannysaurus

Thanks, I'll give VPN's a go xD
I'm aware download speed doesn't affect it but I was hoping to find the specific cause, like low quality bandwith.

oxo_

The cause of higher pings can be down to a couple of things, most notably your ISPs route they take to the gaming servers you play on.
Some games are perfect on UPC (like wow or even swtor was great for low ping times) but others can be hit and miss at times.

There's a script you can run which could drastically lower your ping times, if I remember rightly you can find it on world of Warcraft addon sites (maybe someone else will link it, I'm posting on an iPhone at the moment) and it's called Leantrix (or something similar).
I'd give that a go first before you rush into VPNs or whatever. It's also free and it does really work.
It just turns off some stuff on the tcp/ip settings on your network card to then lower your latencies experienced.

Actually you could probably search the games forum here for links to it.

oxo_

Leatrix even, not Leantrix.

Anyway, here we go, give this a go and read the info so you understand...

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html

You don't need world of Warcraft to install or use the addon, it's just a script you run.

RichieD

Think of your internet connection as a road, and the data as cars.

The higher your connection MB/s, the WIDER the road is, so you can literally send way more cars down it in a shorter time.

But your ping is determine by the shape of the road, maybe your road goes straight from A-B and you'll get amazing ping. Or maybe your road meanders around (routing through different ISPs in different countries) and it takes much longer to travel on it.

So, your bandwidth actually doesnt much effect your ping especially since games use only small amounts of data

Bobzer77

RichieD wrote: »

So, your bandwidth actually doesnt much effect your ping especially since games use only small amounts of data

Unless you have other people using the internet on the same network.