How can i reduce my ping when playing games on online servers?

Question

When playing online i mostly play enemy territory which you have to connect to there server i got a broadband booster that brought it down to 50 ping but now its gone back up to 200+ how can i reduce this any quick fixes or tweaks???

www.bull3tproof.net

Answer 1

This is always an issue for me as an online gamer.

First-Check your intrernet connection. Obviously you already have high speed or else you wouldn't even be playing. If you have Cable, then consider the $10 upgrade per month that some (like Cablevision in NY) offer to go to a service thats 30MB Down & 2 MB up) which is double the standard Cable speed of 15/1.
DSL companies also offer better connections for $10-$20 more per month.

If this is not an option, call your cable or DSL company and ask them how you can check the strength of your signal. Maybe something has happened to slow it down. They shoud fix this at no charge.

Second-If the machine you use to play your games is connected via a wireless network connection it certainly is slower than being hooked up directly into the router through Ethernet cable.

Does your computer have the following few items-a 256mb PCI Express or AGP video card rather than a regular PCI card? Does your computer have a PCI Express slot to put a PCI express card in? You can't typically get a slot without replacing the machine. Many newer games have phased out even trying to cater to people with regular PCI cards. Even AGP will be on it's way out soon.

At least 1GB RAM?

A diagnostic tool that runs weekly that removes clutter? Like temp files and unused cookies. One that optimizes hard drive usage. One that I recommend would be System Mechanic Pro. It's $39.95 and does alot of these things without taking over your machine. You can download it online at Iolo.com.

I don't know what games you play, but going into the options and reducing you graphics settings like detail for units,terrain, buildings, background and all the different little pixel and resolution settings within the game, it could drastically improve your ping rate to your fellow players.

Make sure your firewall is either shut off or in Game Mode.

Make sure you have your IM deatcivated and that nothing is downloading on your machine or another machine within the house. If your sister is downloading music on another PC, your ping will suffer badly.

This is as much as I can think of off the top of my head.

Best of luck

Answer 2

Enemy Territory is a great game and free to boot!!
When you log on to the server you can check certain items that allow you to tailor your search. I always "crossed" the full server box so i never saw that one and always "ticked" the Punkbuster so that only they were seen.

If you have a 512k internet connection you should still be able to find plenty of servers on 1 ping. Just don't play on any over 200.

As Dockery mentioned you should make sure that you aren't running any background applications. If your computer is slowing down then your ping will also suffer.

After you connect to the internet but before you start ET, do Ctrl-Alt-Delete for Task Manager and click the Processes tab. Click the CPU column header to sort the processes by highest CPU usage. System Idle should be top and 95% or above. If anything else is gobbling up your CPU usage you could have a virus.
Obviously, if that's the case do a virus scan, if not then try removing unecessary services. I believe it's MSCONFIG in the "Run" command on your Start Menu. You'll have to read up about that because it would take too much room here and you really need to be careful you don't remove system or important processes.

512Mb Ram, 32Mb Graphics and 1.2Ghz CPU is sufficient for this game. Adjust settings to get the best speed. Max graphics will slow it down a lot without any real noticable graphical difference to you the gamer so pick something nearer the middle.

Good Luck m8.
I'll be on it next year so look for Bror Jace (that's my nick on there) or Dribbalot, my ex who also loves to play it.

Answer 3

Hi there, I play online games such as BF2 CS:S etc etc. The biggest problem is if someone else in your house is on the internet at the same time as you. I've found that if someone else is on msn at the same time as when im playing my ping jumps to about 500 (when normally it is at 20). Do you have any programs that download content off the net, (xfire downloading demos, ign download manager etc). As previous suggestions say, check with your ISP (your provider) and check the status of your connection, it may be possible that there having some connection issues.

Are you connected using wired or wireless. If wireless, I would reccommend attempting hardwired, although obviously if thats not possible that wasnt much help....
Try moving your pc close to the wireless router, to gain a stronger signal, make sure there are no (or very few) walls in between the pc and the router.

If you are hardwired, try and use the shortest cable possible, and opt to use the ethernet port (if the router and your pc has one) rather than USB.

I know its a big pain when the internet plays up, so i hope i have helped.

P.s www.bull3tproof.net cool site.

Answer 4

ping is a measure of response time from one connection to a server, and back again. its used to check lag on a conection. the high ping players get dropped so they dont lag the game. there are a number of factors that can effect your lag. from your internet connection at the time, to whoever is hosting a game, wherever they are located in the world, to how good their connection is. No, normaly there is no way you can change your ping response time manualy. its the server that doest it. all ping is is the number of miliseconds it takes for sending a signal from one place to another, and than back again to see how long a reply takes. There are other things that you can do though. if your using a console to play a game online, use wired instead of wireless, make sure your computer is doing nothing at all, like no downloads, and you can even reset your router befor you turn on your console to start your session, if you havnt reset your router in a while.

Answer 5

Play on a server nearest to you if they give you a choice of server. (Never played that game so not sure).

Reduce the number of background programs running - close anything unnecessary. Especially anything that may use the internet such as messenger.

As in all network models you need to find the bottleneck and improve it. If it's your ISP then there's little you can do except change to another. If it's the distance to your exchange there is nothing you can do apart from move!

Answer 6

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Answer 7

To do with connection there are a couple of commands that you can try, but this is not a replacement for highspeed this will only give you about 10ms ping difference. cl_timnudge,com_maxfps,rate,snaps,cl_maxpackets, all these will effect ping so you will have to play with them. if you are wanting xtra help on these commands go to http://www.lostboyz.us and the help section or contact me through there. our server is located in u.s. GA stop by and check us out.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

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