I posted a question concerning on-line gamming once before so I hope this is not considered trolling.

When I am connecting to a server I am shown a “ping” number. Is it better for that number to be high or low? The numbers I am receiving are drastically different. Some indicate between 200 and 400, while others show numbers in the thousands.

Please excuse my ignorance and thank you for any help.

The ping is simply the number of milliseconds (thousandths of a second) that it takes for your computer to send a data packet to another computer and to get a reply. Therefore the smaller the ping the better because it means there is a better connection between you and that computer. You see different values because of course there is a different ping between every 2 computers. Numbers in the thousands are atrocious I mean take a ping of 2000. This means that it takes 2 whole seconds for data to get through. If you were playing Quake or something you would fire your gun and maybe only a second later (half the 2000) would it fire on the server. And you would be 2 seconds behind everyone on the server. To play real time games enjoyably you need pings below 100 between you and the game server.

I take it from your pings of 200 to 400 that you have a dial-up modem. You can play some real time games but you will be at a disadvantage. You will be fine on most other games though. The best ping I've got between me and a server (on ADSL) is 30ms but that is rare.

[ 01-31-2003, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]

Before I start, I'd better explain trolling a bit too. First of, asking a question is not trolling. It's asking a question.
Trolling is what you are doing when you are posting with the purpose of insulting someone, or setting people up against one another. Your question doesn't look like an attempt at trolling in any way (although posting it a hundred times would be very annoying and people'd be quite sure you did it on purpose TO annoy. Then it may be considered trolling. But this is not ;) ).

Now, with that out of the way...

When you're pinging another computer you are basically sending it a very small packet of information. Once it gets there, it's bounced back to your own computer, kind of like an echo.
You can use it to determine IF you can reach a computer (if you can't the ping package won't return.
You can use it to determine HOW LONGit takes to bounce a packet off of another site, which tells you the distance to the other computer in network terms.
Also, if a site seems slow, you can compare ping distances to other sites to determine whether it is the site, the network, or your system that is slow.
When you ping a domain name it'll give you the IP adress in response.

What you use it for in online gaming is mostly checking if there actually is a connection, or if you or another player dropped out. All is well when you get a ping, but the connection is faster when the ping is low (as it takes less time for you to reach the other computer and vice versa.

Thank you for your help. Legolas, Thanks as well about explaining the troll issue a little better for me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Ping has been well explained above. I won't say more.

Just an advice for server choice:
Ping higher than 300
you can't play anything but chess and turn based strategy games.
Ping between 300 and 150
It depends on the game you are playing: battlefield 1942 will be choppy but playable, serious sam 2 will be still enjoyable (no precision fire needed), Medals of honor will be really difficult to play since it requires aiming skills and fast reflexes.
Ping under 150
Do whatever you want and kick some serious youknowwhat :D

Also mind that some servers have ping autokick: this means that if your ping (instant or average) goes beyond the specified value, you will be kicked. Usually this is specified in the server name, so don't bother joining a server with autokick 150 (most MOHAA servers)if your ping is 300.

One last thing: the in game ping might be actually slightly higher or lower than that you can see on gamespy arcade window, so beware if your ping is 149...

Oh, man.... and I just came on here to say PONG!!!!!!!!! :D

Actually, can one of you very wizened folks tell me how to check the "ping" on my WinXP machine? Thanks. ;)

TL, open a command window (ie DOS window). If you don't know how:
start->Run...-> enter CMD or Command and you get a DOS window. Now you can type ping ironworks.com or ping 66.93.167.35.

To close the window, just type exit, or use the little X upper right box.

TL

Goto the start button and select 'Run' --> Type cmd.
This gives you the command prompt.
Now type ping (ip address or domain name) - without () of course.
Use any ip or domain you like. Some computers don't accecpt ping packets, so you may get time outs. Also you may get time outs due to net congestion. type ping -wX (ip) where X is a number in milliseconds to increase the timeout time.

Have fun .....

<font color=skyblue>heh...I was thinking the same thing!

Thanks for your elaborate explanation of pinging, guys. Before today, I had not thought about ping-time in relation to gaming online. Now I am curious to see how well mine does.</font>

<font color=skyblue>heh...I was thinking the same thing!

Thanks for your elaborate explanation of pinging, guys. Before today, I had not thought about ping-time in relation to gaming online. Now I am curious to see how well mine does.</font></font>[/QUOTE]????? well in relation to what did you think about it then? Online gaming is about the only application where ping is really important, except maybe streaming video/audio.