Ping on online games?

Ok, so, there is something I don't understand about my ping on online games. I use Xfire, a gaming tool used for chat with other people, and for connecting to servers on games such as Call of Duty, BF2 and more. When I refresh a server over Xfire thats located in my country, it says my ping is like 33 - 36, which is decent, but this is really strange as no matter what server it is, whenever I actually go into the server and connect, my ping is always about 20 higher than it says on Xfire, like I would always get around 50 - 55 ping in game. I do realise that 50 isn't bad for ping, i'm just a bit confused as to why people living further away from the located server, oftenly get better ping than me in game. It's like i'll be in a server located in London, UK, and I live about 70 miles away from London, someone from NL will get about 40 ping, and i'll be at 50...


This is strange and i'd like to know the answer to this bizzarre thing.


If anyone can help I would be grateful.


Thanks.

Ping on online games?
I believe you are looking at 2 seperate statistics and calling them by the same name. Ping, and Latency.





Ping is the time it takes for data to physically travel the distance between your computer and the server.





Latency is the time it takes the data to travel to the server AND be received and acted apon. ie. the time between hitting the "fire" button on your keyboard and when the server actually registers that you fired.





your latency can rise under multiple conditions. the obvious one being a slower server gets backed up processing too many inputs from too many users and the delay increases before it can get to your last input. Another cause is your Xfire program is consuming part of your bandwidth, and if your using it for voice chat, that consumes a large amount of bandwidth. As a higher percentage of your bandwidth is dedicated to voice, a lower percentage is dedicated to sending everything else, including your game inputs. Instructions that would normally be able to fit in 2ms of transmission now take mabye 6ms. and this has an increasingly cumulative effect. as you send hundreds of commands (move left, jump, move left, move left, move left, fire, move left, fire....etc) your connection becomes unable to relay all your commands in real time, so while you pushed "fire" 200ms ago, it's still in line waiting to get sent to the server behind 150 other "move left" commands.





apon re-reading your question, I have more info :)





The reason you can be closer to the server physically and someone farther away can have a better ping, is that data does not flow the most efficient physical path, it follows the most efficient logical path. This means that the signal doesn't just step next door across your lawn, but it has to travel all the way to your ISP, thru a variable number of other routing stations/servers before it gets to the servers ISP, and then back to the server. if someone else is physically located closer to their ISP than you are to yours, and they have to travel thru less routing hops than you do, then their ping will likly be lower than yours.
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Ping depending on your ISP, if your ISP connect to more servers before it reach to the gamming server then your ping time is less, if you need lower ping time contact your ISP or change your ISP.
Reply:ur lucky. when ppl play halo its like 200 ping but thats normal for halo i guess
Reply:I belive that server lag causes the extra ping. Which is the time it takes to communicate to the server and the time for it to get to everyone else ect. I am not a computer genius but I know that is where your extra ping is comming from.

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