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So I've recently run into this infuriating problem in CoD where I can't connect to half the servers because they're for "low-ping players only." This baffles me, as my ping is consistantly under 250, and never, ever goes higher than 270, and these servers usually have a ping of around 280-300. Shouldn't my ping be low enough to connect to them?

Low ping nowadays is <50. If it's at 100 or higher then you're considered high ping, and some CS servers will kick you for having ping around 120.

Yikes...I always thought that <100 was a low-ping. Sometimes I play on the Battlefield Server at Purdue, which is like half a mile from my apartment, and get like a 30 ping. It's T1 and I'm on a 1 Mbps cable connection, and my ping is still that high. Man...I wish I could get a <50 ping on every server

HemlockGrey wrote:So I've recently run into this infuriating problem in CoD where I can't connect to half the servers because they're for "low-ping players only." This baffles me, as my ping is consistantly under 250, and never, ever goes higher than 270, and these servers usually have a ping of around 280-300. Shouldn't my ping be low enough to connect to them?

Ping, like many things in the world, is a relative thing. When you see a server's ping, what you are seeing is how good your connection to that server is, not how fast a connection that server has. To illustrate, let's take a look at Boomstick Ernie and Deadeye.

Deadeye, being the l33t sniper he is, abuses his cable modem connection. Boomstick Ernie is still on dialup. Both try to connect to =Black Pigs= (HG) Pub to get their game on. The =Black Pigs= (HG) Pub server is on a fat cable pipe and running on a sweet machine, capable of holding 64 players at any one time without any major slowdown.

Deadeye sees this server as having a ping of 34ms, meaning that's how long it takes information to travel between him and the server. He connects expecting to get his frag on.

Boomstick Ernie looks at the same server and sees his ping at 340ms. He connects thinking it's not so bad (in reality, he's at a massive disadvantage, having roughly one-tenth the reaction time of Deadeye, but that's another tale). In short, the 280-300ms pings you're seeing on servers are all coming from your own connection limitations.

The problem is that depending on how the game's netcode is made, that large of a disperity between players can lead to problems for anyone else playing. Warping, stutter, and so on are problems often associated with high-ping players. If servers institute ping limits, it's so that people who have low pings don't suffer the problems inherant when high-ping players join the servers.

Low ping is generally considered to be 100 milliseconds or less. Anything more and bad things can start happening, given the pace of many FPS games online. Ideal is considered to be below 50 milliseconds.

I would suggest that you begin investing in a broadband connection of some sort, especially if you want to continue playing FPS games online. It's quickly becoming a requirement for enjoyable play.

Ping can also be affected by router configurations between you and the host, as well as the performance of the router/firewall you are using yourself.

Here is my explanation:
Firstly, recall that ping is measured in miliseconds, or 1/1000th of a second. So if your ping was 1000, there is a 1 second "gap" between when the host sends you info and when you recieve it.

The key here is "primarily" the difference. So consider the difference compared to your reaction time. There are of course other factors, but ping is usually the biggest after reaction time. So all things being equal, bad ping is really having ping 250 or so ms more than others. Mind you this is for your common FPS, not say, WoW, where even with pings of over 1000 you can still play fairly effectively.

Well, thanks, but I thought I would have a low ping, I mean, I do have an ADSL broadband connection...

Sigh...

It's just that whenever I try to connect to a server now, I feel like a black Jewish man trying to join a country club.

Thanks anyway.

Probably caused by the intercontinental distance from the servers?

Off-Topic: That reaction time thingy is tight...I'm gonna have to do experiments with it when I'm drunk

I'm waaaaay out of the loop with online multiplay. The highest pings I've seen was 1400.

Fun thing to do if your ping to a server is high and you want to know why:
go into your command prompt (in xp that'd be run: cmd) and punch in tracert <ip address>. Your computer will then attempt to map the route of packets between you and the ip address you gave it.

HemlockGrey wrote:This baffles me, as my ping is consistantly under 250, and never, ever goes higher than 270, and these servers usually have a ping of around 280-300. Shouldn't my ping be low enough to connect to them?

Whoa, you're ping is incredibly high. I see people start bitching when they see people that have more than 80 or so ping. My regular ping is in the 50-70 range.