Ping/Connections/Lag

[firewolf]

I used to play a game called StarCraft: Broodwar Multiplayer on B.Net and a bunch of us in the same city would play. However, the one's who seemed to lag, were the ones with not so good computers. E.g. 450 MHz, some lower. But the one's with higher, such as me, were fine and experienced no lag whatsoever. We all have our connections from the same ISP.

So, I was wondering why it is like that? I had a 900 MHz computer with 512 RAM and when I bought my new computer, my internet didn't get any better. I didn't expect it to, but I was hoping.

Now, I play Return To Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer and have high ping when I connect to European Servers. Is there anything I can do to get a lower ping other than phone my ISP and upgrade?

[DVNT1]

You will have latency if the processor is too slow becaue the cycles needed to porocess the game fast are simply not there. Therefore the game must wait on the processor to process the information. If the game runs slow, the multiplayer communication part simply receives data slowly so others see this latency.

As for your latency to European servers, that is most likely affected by the larger number of routers you have to pass through to get to the game server. Every router (aka "hop") adds time to the data packet's trip to the destination. This is smiple due to teh fact thr router has to receive the data, check it's destination compared to it's rules, then send the data out anouther interface. Cheaper routers and overused routers will add more time than high quality and low usage routers do.

Other than the two items you mentioned, you could run several traces to the game servers you normally connect to, email that to your ISP asking if they can improve this latency any. Maybe they will/can help, or maybe not.