[Crystalline]

What exactly affects Ping? I'm from Europe and, when playing on a Brazilian server, my ping's super high. Granted, it should be high nonetheless, due to how far away the place the server's hosted at is, but not as high as 230 or so.

If I get a connection with more mbps (I have around 30 now) will I get a better ping?

Does it have to do with the quality of the server itself?

Is it the ethernet cables/interfaces my hardware might use?

And no, I'm not downloading anything when I experience the aforementioned high ping, so it must be something else.

Any advice is appreciated.

[FS Frankie V]

The only thing that makes a difference in ping is the number of hops so you can use traceroute to count the number of hops from the client to the server.

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If I get a connection with more mbps (I have around 30 now) will I get a better ping?

Not really considering you can get a 250-300 ping on dialup if the server is less than X hops away.

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Does it have to do with the quality of the server itself?

Yes it can but not so much an issue as to ping but available bandwidth. As a home based server I have 100 down and 5 up and can handle 1V1 with no issues but 16 player server = a bad day.

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Is it the ethernet cables/interfaces my hardware might use?

Sure as in the cables that comes with the router = as about as cheap as you can get but still work.

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And no, I'm not downloading anything when I experience the aforementioned high ping, so it must be something else.

What is your ping? Assuming you are getting 230 then your in the butter zone. How fast is 230 blink. The average human blink is 300-400ms but even then the number you see in game is the make you feel warn and fuzzy number as it is the high low average and the fact that the server holds back a state change by default of 50ms I would say at 230 ignore it and focuses more on winning.

[thelionroars]

Number of hops is not the whole story, the distance between hops is usually the most significant factor (speed of light latency is a b&%@#). You are going to get a lot of latency when the communication is between continents - 230ms round trip time from Europe to South America sounds about right.

There are only 2 things that could improve the ping between continents - choosing a different (shorter route) undersea cable for the communication and improved routing by the carriers it is travelling through (assuming the routing is not already optimal). You have no control over either of these, it's entirely up to the ISPs of yourself and the game server's provider and who they peer with.

This post has been edited by thelionroars: 04 December 2015 - 02:52 PM

[Crystalline]

thelionroars, on 04 December 2015 - 02:51 PM, said:

Number of hops is not the whole story, the distance between hops is usually the most significant factor (speed of light latency is a b&%@#). You are going to get a lot of latency when the communication is between continents - 230ms round trip time from Europe to South America sounds about right.

There are only 2 things that could improve the ping between continents - choosing a different (shorter route) undersea cable for the communication and improved routing by the carriers it is travelling through (assuming the routing is not already optimal). You have no control over either of these, it's entirely up to the ISPs of yourself and the game server's provider and who they peer with.

Hmmm, so there's not much I can do, apparently?

Frankie did comment on my question regarding ethernet cables, and my hardware's interfaces, and such. Do you think buying better cable would help? Gosh, I know how noob'ish this sounds, so just bear with me, haha. I'll mention one thing, though, I currently am using Powerline adapters to connect, but it technically still is a direct connection. Still, do you thing it'd be different if I had a cable directly plugged into the Modem/Router? Not that I can do that, given certain limitations, but regardless, I'm still curious.

[Mod Iye]

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You have no control over either of these, it's entirely up to the ISPs of yourself and the game server's provider and who they peer with.

Oh yeah. i remember when my ISP decided to change my routing to the US and my ping on every US server was increased by 40.
Or when coget decided to drop UDP packets in the US/around boston IXP...


Anyways. Back to topic.

i suppose nothing will help you with an EU to SA connection. you get a ping of about 110 to NA east coast IXPs from germany, then add the fact that you need another connection to SA and you end up somewhere at 200+.

so assuming that your bandwidth to your ISP is above 1MB/s down and maybe .5MB/s up there is nothing you can do about that.

neither a better cable(hell, a better cable might get you ~1ms in your LAN, thats probably not even measurable in a EU to SA connection), nor swithching you dLAN (powerLAN) for a real ethernet cable will help that. Sure a dLAN can get crappy if there are a lot of electronics connected to your power line, something like power strip with a switch can already create interferences, but that is something you would notice as a stuttering connection, not a overall increased ping.


Hope that clarifies it.

[FS Frankie V]

In a nut shell, and as other have said, nope there is no way to improve ping of any worth or effort on the client side of things unless something improves down stream. Ping on the other hand will not improve you skills and abilities by default to the same level of the million dollar player.

To see skill over ping check this out.



Check out Shans 400 ping and all.

[Crystalline]

Thanks for all the input, guys. I understand the situation, now.