I didn't ask this in the hardware forum since it's a question for gamers.

How do you lower your ping? I'm on a dialup cable (cause my ISP is the inbred hick of a regular isp) so my upload line is dialup and of course, many packets are sent back to the server. The game I play is Unreal Tournament on servers around 12-15 hops away from here, but my ping is an average of around 200+, perhaps 175 on a good day and 300 on a bad. It might not seem high but to any gamer, it's a killer. I play against these high school kids who play around 5 hours a day on pings between 50-125 so basically no matter what happens, I will always die first unless I surprise someone and even then, I might die first. Is there a way to lower my ping to around 150 and keep it there? Even if it involved burning down my ISP so they have to replace the equipment, I'll do it, the stuff they have now is probably all running on old 386's anyways seeing as they suck so much. Especially lately, I notice all sorts of weird things due to lag and packet loss, people are warping all over the place, I shoot in one and next thing I know, that guy is gunning me down for 15 feet another way. I see ppl moving, I empty my clip in them, but it ends up they are much closer so I shoot a wall 30 times. Anyways, it sucks and it's no fun playing when everyone sees you and to them, you seem to have the slowest reflexes in the world as you can't see them back.

I'm not totally positive but I'm pretty sure that high ping times are usually ISP related problems, and you have to do some investigating to find out how to get a closer server. You didn't mention your ISP name or if you could switch but I've heard that Concentric and Earthlink are good ISP's for low ping times but I can't vouch for any since I have not used them. There is a very good article called Three Fingers Internet Lag Guide that might help, also one called Three Fingers Net Tweaking that explain what to do if your a large number of hops away as in your case.

Other things that might help a few milliseconds, and you probably have already done this but just for the record, are to End Task all applications except Explorer and Systray when you play and try to free as much memory as possible. GameSpy also helps get you on a server the fewest hops away but again, I'm going off what others have said here I have not tried it yet. I hope these help so you can go out there and kick those high schooler's asses!!

Switch to Cable or DSL.

WORD! its not going to be pretty unless you get a DSL, T1 line, or Cable. thats the honest truth. why do you think college kids play a lot? they have the T1 right there infront of them on campus.

oh and PUNKBUSTER sure as hell screws your ping a bit

in some cases, cable is even worse than dial up depending on the provider

A gamer's best friend is DSL

that is so true!!


Your guys are correct in saying DSL and cable are the way to go, still for some people, their stingy cable companies or ISP's don't have cable or DSL available and just say its "coming soon." We just got cable around here last march but its been awesome. try looking into dsl or cable options feneant. Though for me even with low latency I still suck at First person shooters and get killed all the time but they're fun to play hehehe

My ISP has been promising cable for 4-5 years... they are owned by Rogers who run Rogers@home but even there, I was in my first year of university when they said we would have cable within 6 months and I just started my 5th year last week so they are too pathetic to offer a real connection.

Well pack your bags buddy, cause it looks like you're just gonna have to move...