TF2 Ping to High?

For some reason, the game keeps booting me off because my Ping is to high. The only server's I play one are the ones with the [OP] in the name, because I have heard somewhere they are good servers, and in my own experience, they are fun to play in.

I am new to TF2, so I don't know of any other servers. I am in the Sacramento, CA location, so I don't know if that makes a difference.

I have Comcast Internet, and I run my Laptop off of the Wireless signal from my Router.

Is there any way to lower my ping?

And why is having a high ping bad?

 

Ping is the amount of time it takes you to send information (about your location, shots fired, etc) to the server and for the server to respond, in ms. A high ping is bad because it makes it difficult for you to shoot people (for example, a ping of 100 means if you shoot, your bullet hits the spot you aimed at 1/10th of a second later... might seem insignificant but it's not, especially considering you are seeing where a person was 100ms ago, so basically, you need to lead all shots by 2/10th of a second.

It also makes it painful for other players, as they have the lead the same way. Lower ping is better. What numbers are you getting specifically?

There are a ton of servers, sort by ping, and join one with a ping of ~25. Also, not using wireless will reduce latency by about 20ms.

 

wireless has no effect on ping at all, use wireless all you want.

Personally, i play on servers with 120 ping all the time... its not that bad, but man, if there was a server i could ping 25 to

 

Uh no, wireless ABSOLUTELY has an effect on ping. The latency on wireless is higher than on wired connections, this affects ping.

 

Think about that statement for a second. Wireless signals are being transferred through the air, through walls, floors, who knows what else. They bounce around and are more prone dropped connections. And these kind of wave-signals arn't nearly as fast as conductive wire used in cables. Then again....if you're running 100ft of cable, it's probably better to just go with the wireless, cause the latency isn't that big of a change if you've still got good equipment.

 

I am also in the Sac area, have Comcast internet, and connect to the internet wirelessly through a router. I can find many TF2 servers that have a ping <50. Just sort the filters by ping.

 

Ok, Thanks for the input everyone. I have an ethernet cable right next to my Laptop, so I might use it when I play. And I will also sort out the games by ping.

 

I stand by my original statement, I have both connection types (wireless and wired) and i see no ping difference between the two. Go ahead, game on wireless all you want, you will never know the difference (assuming you dont have some ancient wireless router/wireless card).

When was the last time you guys tried gaming on wireless? 1998?

 

On a side note, just wondering if you have any p2p apps running (for example, uTorrent etc). Sometimes, these apps are actively running and downloading/uploading data which can also cause your ping to hit the high numbers.

 

btw in the steam server browser it says "latency" which is the same thing as ping. sort it by that, and anything under 50 is great, 100 good, over that wouldnt ever consider it but its not unplayable...

 

When I play LAN games at my house, my wired pc has a ping of like 4, where my laptop usually gets 8-10. Its not that big of a difference...i'm just saying, there IS a measurable difference.

 

Wanna know how you can see a difference? Get on wired and ping your router. Then get on wireless and ping your router. Wired will be 1-2ms tops. Wireless will likely by 10-25ms.

 

on Thai servers i always have 5 ping on CSS on my wiresless, pretty awesome

 

You probably have a messed up rate somewhere then. Because it's borderline impossible to have a 5 ping even locally wirelessly.

 

you are completely wrong about this whole thing. Wireless is just as good as a wired connection. Here is the proof:



now, as you can see wireless gets a ping of 1ms while the wired connection gets <1ms. That difference is completely negligible, and essentially, wireless = wired.

If i try again on wireless, i get <1ms, <1ms, <1ms, 1ms. This is from my room some 15-20 feet away from the router, and through two walls.

 

ownage to the face.

 

Lol, I had no idea a simple question would cause such Anarchy!

But none-the-less, Thanks for the replies guys, I will sort out the games by Latency. Feel free to continue bickering *cough* I mean discussing.

 

Well, this "might" help people, idk..


but.. I JUST ran these tests.. wireless vs wired..
look at the date and times

WIRED - 100ft CAT6 cable


Wireless - trendnet wireless N router, intel N wifi card.. 100% signal


Now tell me wireless doesn't have an effect!?

 

Yeah I am not wrong, next time try ping 192.168.100.1 -t. THEN YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO LOAD A GAME AND PLAY IT FOR A BIT. Jesus christ, how did you miss that one? It of course matters what you're doing.
Since my laptop can't play games, I made a feeble attempt at simulating gaming, by loading up two youtube videos.

On wireless G, from 3 feet away from the access point, going through nothing, I got between <1ms and 1ms constant. Once I began loading the youtube videos, my ping fluxuated between <1ms and 10ms. Add more traffic, especially bidirectional traffic (such as... hmm, a game!) and this will fluxuate even more, because with a lot of traffic and CSMA/CA, the protocol Wireless uses to handle collisions, for every collision the transmitter has to wait a random amount of time (of course all unimportant amounts when addressed individually), but this also adds up.

When loading the videos on my wired connection (which amusingly enough, hops through 3 switches) still steadily pinged <1ms.

In fact, if you do ping 192.168.100.1 -t and leave it running long enough, you will notice ever 20 or so packets, you'll have a ping that's jumped up (for me, it's going as high as 65ms). And when you consider how many millions of packets are sent during a several hour gaming session, you'll realize just how much 1/20 is.

So okay, ownage to the face? Maybe if you were right. There's a reason no serious gamers will not play on wireless. Unknown's example really shows a difference, WHICH YES IS REALLY THERE, because there was actual activity on the network, not *just* a ping.

 

At least when i click Tab i see my ping as 5 in CSS on a wireless network

others have mostly 30-100

 

unknowns example shows nothing as to gaming on wireless vs wired. If you can name one game that needs more speed than what he got on wireless, then I will agree that wired is better than wireless for gaming. Until then, wireless ~ wired.

Remember, we are testing whether or not it is ok to play games on wireless, not testing that if we max out a wireless N router (which no games today can do) using speedtest.net if we will gain 11 ping and only have download/upload speeds of 12000/17000. You will never notice that while playing a game over the internet.

As for your example, you tested using a wireless G router. Those things cant handle anything. I had one a while back and the most it could handle was me playing counterstrike, but once we got an xbox going on the same router (it didnt seem to matter if it was connected directly or wirelessly) my ping playing counterstrike would double, almost triple. I ran those same tests (streaming youtube videos and running a ping test, while my brother was playing WoW) on my wireless N router and noticed no ping spikes and no dropped packets.

Seriously, get a new router then try gaming on it. You will never know the difference. But honestly, I think this might just be one of those situations where we are going to have to agree to disagree.

 

It's not about throughput... it's about latency. They're apples and oranges and you're not understanding the difference. You're right though, I'm not going to argue with you anymore. Some people are not worth educating.

 

The OP said "I keep getting kicked for having high ping"

11 ping can mean the difference between kicked, and not kicked. Especially if he's on the fence between them. 201ping=kick, 190ping=stay.

You can definitly notice a difference between kicked and not kicked when trying to play a game.

 

he wont have 11 ping higher when hes playing TF2...

unknown, how did you get 0ms ping using a wired connection anyway?

 

Look at his connection... 20 down 50 up... he's gotta be on... god, I don't even know. FiOS?

 

I get a sub 10 ping on many servers when i play, and i play using a wireless connection.