Ping

[Fraemi]

Before anything else I want to apologize for posting the same question two times. I couldnt find a reliable enough place in my own country so I will post it here(I am Latvian - eastern europe, not too far away). I have very strange ping times with almost everything! For example on WoW i have a ping time of 300-600 (where 100-200 is normal) and on shooter games i have ping times of 300 which in about 10 sec. climb to 700, of course the game is unplayable. But when I do speedtest.net speed test they show about this: 30 ping and it says 15000 Kb/s download and upload of 2200 Kb/s for Latvia (my home), for America: (almost other side of earth) a playable ping of 120 and a good download /upload speed- 1/5 fifth of before mentioned, but for far east I get very bad stats (but I never will try playing games with the far east) a uplaod of 100 kb/s and download of 600 kb/s and a gigantic ping of 600, and most importantly with Europe I get very good stats which are much more than needed for swift playing: this is the speed for London which is about 10000 Kb/s and upload of 1500 Kb/s (depending on time of day, but always good). I dont konw what kind of connection I have, but there is an antena on top of my house pointed towards a local cenral or something like that. Some things say that these constantly high ping speeds could indicate a problem with my internet connection. I am worried that I may have some viruses which mess up those speed tests. Please reply someone this seems to be a major problem on my PC! My computer is old 512 ram, 128 video and 2.4 Gh. My friend told me that with those results I wont have any problems with internet games, but as I said before these are very bad problems. I pay about 17 pounds a month for my internet connection. And my friend with the same type of connection and 600 Kb/s has a ping of 100-200. This dosent make any sense! Please reply!

[fo3nix]

I assume you've run all the antivirus programs etc., spyware programs?

The pings do make some sense. Pings are generally lower to the states because the line bandwidth between europe and the states is greater than that through india etc.

[Fraemi]

Thats one of the problems i havent got any decent anti-virus programs, but I am going to get one soon.
I forgot to post the real question it is: How can the speedtest.net give me good ping results but in reality I get bad ones? And three minor questions: 1. How can my friend with 600 Kb/s get a ping of 80-150, and I (with the same type of internet) get a ping of 300-750. 2. If my computer is old can it mess up ping times? 3. Can viruses mess up speedtest.net?

[fo3nix]

ping is to a certain server.

1. pinging the speedtest.net server(s) may well have very different values to another server you ping -- it depends where the servers are, their current load, the connection line quality, etc.

minor:
1. are they both to the same exact server? if so, it may well be you're on a different exchange or something, depending on how your connection is setup with your ISP (I have no idea how it works in your country though).

2. if it's very very old then yes. but yours isn't that old, so no, your computer's specifications will not be a factor of your ping times.

3. the viruses could be slowing your computer's connection in general, thus including speedtest.net.

AVG free is good:
http://free.grisoft.com

also get their spyware protection, or adaware. and make sure you're running a firewall like zonealarm free.

[isj032]

Also, just to add, when i play counter strike there are always program level rates which apply to every server, I don't know if these are used and configurable in every game but i do know that they have a considerable impact on your latency. Ask the admin in the servers or check on the game specific forums about the servers rates and see if that makes a difference.

[Fraemi]

Few more examples: My 2 Mb/s friend on the same WoW server gets a ping about 120-150, but I with a 10 Mb/s internet on the exact same server get a high amplitude ping of 300-700, we live about 2 kilometres away from each other, this is very strange and shouldnt be like this! I have 5 times faster net but I get 3-4 times bigger ping! One more example: When I ping some servers they sometimes shows 10 ping (really). But when I enter the sever I get a starting ping of 300 and it climbs to 750. But 1 (probably more) servers give me a ping of 50, not bad, but when I enter the server I have a constant ping of 20. This is totaly wrong! How can it be?