Online Gaming. What Is 'ping'?

[Richb2004v2]

In terms of gaming what does 'Ping' mean? I get the message 'this game is for low ping only' and have no idea what it means. I think I am running games at about 450 ping what ever that means.

Also, with the online game I'm playing it often freezes with the message 'connection interrupt'. Does this mean my internet connection is dropping?

I thought that we had a gaming sub forum here somewhere, but I can't find it.

[Crushdepth]

Ping is the roundtrip time to send a signal to another computer and get a response. So if you are playing an online game and (say) try to move it will take about half a second (450 milliseconds) before you see the results. If your ping time is high you will experience a lot of lag and it can make a game unplayable.

[thithi]

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Edited May 22, 2009 by thithi

[Cuban]

Consider the origin of the 'ping' straight from submarines sonar location, sound wave travels through the water - bounces off the seabed or hunting enemy ship and the echo comes back... Ping!

Time taken from sending the impulse to hearing the reply translates to the distance to target. (quaility of the echo gives information about the size and format of the reflecting surface)

I recall that the computer 'ping' was developed to allow someone to get an audible response that a particular computer device was still responding while being worked upon at the far end of a large lab or office suite.

Some games require fast updates between users, like some multi user games played within a meeting hall. I know some of my friends in Japan/Taiwan group together on prefered ISPs to futher bring down their 'ping' response times.

HTH

[Richb2004v2]

I see. So how do I get my ping down? Is it all to do with the internet service provider?

[namoo]

If it is World of Warcraft you are playing. Then www.wowtunnels.com will half your ping from Thailand - works well and very cheap.

[DP25]

I see. So how do I get my ping down? Is it all to do with the internet service provider?

What games are you trying to play? There might be nothing you can do if you're playing with people overseas. You need to play on servers in Thailand or at least Asia if you want to get a good ping.

[webfact]

I see. So how do I get my ping down? Is it all to do with the internet service provider?

Download a free program called Sam Spade and test the "ping" for yourself

SAM SPADE

Its an easy to use utility

Sam Spade features include:

ping - nslookup - whois - IP block and much more

[Veazer]

Real world ping time are a little higher because the packets actually contain information. Here's an example, i'll ping yahoo normally (very small packet) and then again with a full pakcet:

C:\>ping yahoo.com

Pinging yahoo.com [209.191.93.53] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=32 time=482ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=32 time=503ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=32 time=423ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=32 time=443ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 209.191.93.53:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 423ms, Maximum = 503ms, Average = 462ms

C:\>ping -l 1466 yahoo.com

Pinging yahoo.com [209.191.93.53] with 1466 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=1466 time=540ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=1466 time=459ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=1466 time=481ms TTL=46

Reply from 209.191.93.53: bytes=1466 time=502ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 209.191.93.53:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 459ms, Maximum = 540ms, Average = 495ms

As you can see, the actual ping time is bit more.

[Richb2004v2]

I see. So how do I get my ping down? Is it all to do with the internet service provider?

What games are you trying to play? There might be nothing you can do if you're playing with people overseas. You need to play on servers in Thailand or at least Asia if you want to get a good ping.

I'm playing an opensource free game called 'Urban Terror'. Even with the high ping its not too bad. I also get a lot of 'interupt' freezes. What causes this?

[DP25]

I'm playing an opensource free game called 'Urban Terror'. Even with the high ping its not too bad. I also get a lot of 'interupt' freezes. What causes this?

The servers are probably just too far away, packets can get lost. I downloaded the server list for Urban Terror using Qtracker and there are some servers in Japan, but there are no servers in Thailand, Singapore, or Malaysia. If you're playing on a server in the USA or Europe, you're just going to have to deal with a high ping, and sometimes lost connections, there isn't much you can do.

If you want to play FPS games with a good ping, try Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, or Call of Duty. They all have servers in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, and lots of local players, so you will get a very good connection with those games.

[Richb2004v2]

I'm playing an opensource free game called 'Urban Terror'. Even with the high ping its not too bad. I also get a lot of 'interupt' freezes. What causes this?

The servers are probably just too far away, packets can get lost. I downloaded the server list for Urban Terror using Qtracker and there are some servers in Japan, but there are no servers in Thailand, Singapore, or Malaysia. If you're playing on a server in the USA or Europe, you're just going to have to deal with a high ping, and sometimes lost connections, there isn't much you can do.

If you want to play FPS games with a good ping, try Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, or Call of Duty. They all have servers in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, and lots of local players, so you will get a very good connection with those games.

Where would I get those games from? I like the open source games because its so easy to download them and play. I've always been a fan of the 'Call of Duty' games though.

[DP25]

There are several places you can get them.

i27games - www.i27games.com (4th floor MBK, to the left of the lift when coming up from near the supermarket)

Zest - www.zest.co.th (many locations, I use the one in Pantip on the I think the 3rd floor, maybe 4th)

There are more places, a lot of shopping malls will have a game shop, but they don't have websites.

All the games from these shops are completely legal, and cheap. Maybe 300-600 baht in most cases.

edit: I only know locations in Bangkok, other places have no idea.

Edited May 26, 2009 by DP25

[phazey]

Ping times can be a little missleading. Normal Ping (like above from the command prompt) records the round trip as quoted elsewhere. Games use two UDP streams, which are only one way.

Back in the early days, 300ms and below was considered playable - indeed on a modem I was quite a competent player. Some games use client side prediction to compensate for the lag involved.

(Rant: Pisses me off when server admins set their max ping to something stupid like 100ms! >;-| )

There is a few things you can do. Find your lowest fragmentation unit. This will tell you how small you can get your packets before they start to fragment . Usually, a machines MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) is set at around 1500 bytes - a few googles done and i'm sure a page detailing how to get that lower (it could be "ping -f -m1450 <Next Hop IP> ) and the lower you go it'll soon start to tell you when frags happen.

Other factors are ISP, the missus downloading her mp3's or ringtones etc, and time.