ping questions

[flippy199]

im wondering exactly how ping is determined, i know it is mainly based on distance.

when my brother is home from college and he sets up his comp in a room next to mine hooked up to the same connection, we usually have almost identical pings, this makes sense. however, when hes at his dorm only about 5 miles away, his ping varies substantially. the internet connection fluctuates sometimes and his ping will jump to 800, but some times he has a real good connection an it will go down to 7 on a server where i have 20 just a few miles away. i have a good connection at home (cable usually tested at 2.5-4.5mbs) so i should be getting the best ping possible for the distance to the server and someone with more bandwidth shouldn't have any advantage over me.... unless theres something i dont understand.

how does my brother's ping ever get more and a couple ms better than mine since he's only a few miles away?

[AmericanDad]

Re: ping questions

I don't know about cable but DSL is definitely faster if you're closer to the telephone exchange, I think 5 miles away is the furthest you can get. If your brother is in a 'dorm' I assume he's on an closed intranet system in which case he's lucky to get any low pings at all. When I was at university I couldn't play bf2 for ****...
and of course if you're in the US and want to play on european servers or the other way round the sheer distance and the number of computers and cables separating you from the bf server mean you have a high ping.
finally bandwidth hasn't got much to do with it. I have 8 mg DSL but if my friend is watching youtube while i play bf2 it messes my ping and i get kicked!

[DesertFalcon]

Re: ping questions

Ping is the amount of time in miliseconds it takes to send a packet to a server and receive it. its not dirrectly corilated to distance allthough distance is a factor.

[{DHL}GrendeL]

Re: ping questions

The PB update/scan happens every 20 seconds while playing so that will add a bit to your ping. Other factors are programs running in the background, especially virus scanners and firewalls. You may also have a data-miner, a nasty piece of spyware that slowly downloads pieces of itself or sends info to a third party from you computer without you knowing about it. Best to run something like Adaware or Spybot:search and destroy as well as your own virus program to make sure you pc is clean. Click on the little tv icon at the bottom of the task bar when you are idle and see if data is being sent and recieved. It's a rough way of showing if there is unauthorised net traffic.
Don't turn your firewall off but check everything is configured properly. Try pinging your server IP and see what you get.

[[MOH] Coach]

Re: ping questions

If you think you are having ping issues you can download a nifty little freeware prgram named "ping plotter". Just google that name and you should find it. Plug the IP of the server you usually play with and it will give you a graph showing all the demarc points along the way and how the ping is effected at each stop. I have used this to determine that there was a problem at a local telephone exchange or with switches 100s of miles away. Your brother is at the mercy of the university network. While he is only a few miles away, he will be routed through exchanges and switches on campus before his packets ever even get to the local exchange. Ping Plotter however should tell him that and if he does find a huge spike somewhere on campus, and asks someone in the campus IT department reeeeeal sweet like, they may help. He could actually help them locate a bad channel on a switcher or router in their system somewhere...if they care! It is good to regularly run scans for virus and spyware but from the sounds of it, this isn;t the major problem. These thing usually result in consistant issues and grow steadily worse. THe number of people online will certainly effect his ping and on a campus, there will be others gaming online, downloading files, playing streaming audio and video so I doubt there is much he can do about it. Just a question, if he is that close to home, why not just cruise home to play??:laugh:

[davelisowski]

Re: ping questions

Universities use Ethernet which will always be faster than your home connection (unless it is also on Ethernet).

Universities usually put limits on downloads (to prevent piracy) which could cause the slow speeds your brother gets sometimes. Additionally, the amount of traffic on the Ethernet determines the speed. More users connected and receiving data will result in slower speeds.

[Iron_Weasel]

Re: ping questions

Universities use Ethernet which will always be faster than your home connection (unless it is also on Ethernet).

Universities usually put limits on downloads (to prevent piracy) which could cause the slow speeds your brother gets sometimes. Additionally, the amount of traffic on the Ethernet determines the speed. More users connected and receiving data will result in slower speeds.

I use an ethernet cable to connect to my router and then another ethernet cable to connect my router to my cable modem...so I should have ub3r l337 sp33dz, y0!

"Ethernet" is a networking standard, NOT a connection type.
Most universities, depending on size, use something as "slow" as a T1 or bonded T1's to faster lines such as an OC3.

However, the amount of data flowing over a LAN, such as a typical university network, can and will degrade the speed by affecting the routers, switches, and the connection itself. You'd be surprised how fast a T3 can be saturated by a bunch of college kids. Ping time should remain fairly consistent until a point at which the connection is being saturated.

Anyway, as has already been pointed out, ping is the amount of time (measured in milliseconds [ms]) that it takes a packet to travel from the source (your computer) to its destination (the server you're contacting). There are numerous factors that can cause your ping to increase. Distance from your local CO / RT is not one of them.

Some examples:

Overloaded node.

Overloaded router en-route to the destination.

Excessive amount of hops between source and destination.

Saturated connection ( usually happens when someone on a home network is on one computer using P2P apps while another is gaming) either upstream or downstream.

Physical distance also is not a good factor when determining what your ping "should" be unless you're trying to connect to a server in another country.
For instance, Comcast routes me to Dallas, Tx after it leaves the local office where it hits the AT&T backbone. So a server in Texas would have a lower ping than one in Colorado or Arizona because that's where my data is being sent first.

Also, don't confuse bandwidth with speed. Larger does not always mean faster.

Think of it this way.....
You could have a 10 foot diameter pipe filled with maple syrup and a 1 foot diameter pipe filled with water....the bigger pipe can carry more at one time, but the smaller one will flow faster.

[JTF2_darkloop]

Re: ping questions

my ping is in the 50's depending where i play and what not

...

[davelisowski]

Re: ping questions

You use a CAT-5 cable...

Ethernet has been standardized as IEEE 802.3.