Reducing Latency in games

[DevilMayCry42]

OK, I have a 512kbps connection, and I get sorta OK pings in TF2.
I was simply wondering, by upgrading to a 1meg connection, would it help my ping at all?
I understand that ping and download speed are separate, but would they still affect each other?

[this_is_gav]

It should only help if you had other activity going on at the same time. What sort of a ping are we talking about? Sure it's not just the server(s) you're on?

[Craig321]

The problem with upgrading to 1mb is the other downloads/internet activites you have going on will just speed up leaving you with the same amount of bandwidth for your game, so if you are running downloads in the background just stop them while you're in game.

An upgrade to a 1mb connection should help your connection speeds/ping out quite well, but your ping will always be high if you are doing other bandwidth intense stuff on the connection.

[Lucio]

Generally speaking, your ping response time is based on physical distance, though of course it's affected by other things on your connection. If you're playing across an international backbone (e.g. in the UK but connecting to US servers), upgrading your connection speed will have next to no effect.

The best thing you can do is to try and switch to a package with a lower contention ratio, if you're in the UK, it can be a real pain to find them, but check out various "Business" packages, they'll charge a lot more for them per month, but dropping that contention ratio means less chance of being interupted by other users and thus, you'll get more consistant ping times.

[burble]

I wouldn't expect increasing your bandwidth to make any difference to your ping times. Ping is a measure of the latency of your link - the physical time it takes for data to get from you to somewhere else.

Having more bandwidth isn't going to change the physical distance or change the laws of physics.

[Lourdes]

Bandwidth and latency are connected. If you're doing other things on your connection then the packets that need to be sent/received for gaming can be delayed by other usage. In this case more bandwidth can help a little but you still run into the problem of priorities unless you use speed limiting and QoS.

To generally reduce latency then you need to look into an ISP with more direct routes to the servers you use and if you use wireless switch to wired.

[DevilMayCry42]

When I play, I usually end up begging everyone to get off the internet so no-one else is using it. I hear what you all are saying, so I don't think I'll bother upgrading the connection. Thanks for your help

[peterb]

Not a product I have used myself, but this might be of interest

cFosSpeed, faster Internet access with Traffic Shaping

[Blitzen]

OK, I have a 512kbps connection, and I get sorta OK pings in TF2.
I was simply wondering, by upgrading to a 1meg connection, would it help my ping at all?
I understand that ping and download speed are separate, but would they still affect each other?

Whether you have .05mbps or 20mbps the latency probably wont change.

However, you can call you ISP and ask them to decrease your ping, it may make you d/l speed take a small hit though.

I was on 14mb with a ping of 56ms.
Called SKY

They sorted it whilst i was on the phone realtime.

I ended up with 12.6mb d/l with 35ms ping.

[Lourdes]

That's interleaving/fastpath, don't think it applies to any 512kbp;s DSL products though.

[Blitzen]

That's interleaving/fastpath, don't think it applies to any 512kbp;s DSL products though.

On ADSL 1 the same applies.
Its massively unlikely that your ping will change whether you have 1mb or step up to 6mb. or drop to 0.5mb