really bored. n good god the pings are back to more or less normal now. found out it was partially streamyx's fault and partially bitdefender's fault. i upgraded bitdef form 2010 to 2011. it features a share updates options that accelerates update speed by using p2p protocol. good thing to normal users, bad for gamers. since it occupies some of your bandwidth thus increasing your ping. in my case, an increase of a WTF 100++ms.
k wat was i going to say...
oh yes. how to lower your ping. so today's topic is how to lower your ping. there are quite a few ways to do this. and you see alot of methods being advertised out there in the internet but not all works. i'll explain 3 of the more common ones.
1. Iobit GameBooster. one of this is my favorite. this thing not only improves your ping but it also shuts down Windows and other services which are not critical to the OS's and game's operation. not only that, any resource wasting applications will be shut down. less load on your pc meant better game performance(i mean less choppy frame rate, it wont improve your gameplay. you'll hv to train harder for that.). but no worry, it will restore everything back to its original state once u turn gamebooster off. so how does it improve your latency? simple, it shuts down bandwidth hogging service such as SSDP, wmp streaming etc. these services constantly sends out packets which raises your ping. you can expect about 100-150ms reduction in latency from this.
2. using a proxy server. ok, this is by far the most popular way i found online. but does it work? its a yes and a no. the yes part is that you will get lower latency in game. keyword=IN GAME. proxy server is like a repeater. to use a proxy, a gamer 1st connects to the proxy, then the proxy connects to the game server. hence, the ping in game will always be lower than the actual ping because the game server is measuring the ping from the proxy server instead of the gamer's pc. the no part is that the actual ping is way higher because of the transaction from the gamer's pc to the proxy server then to the game server. hence, the proxy server does not decrease your actual ping but it does decrease your ping in game.
3. disabling Nagle's Algorithm. this only applies for Windows Vista and 7. this thing is a type of protocol that improves the efficiency of packet sending but it also increases latency. packets are essentially data you send into the internet when you use the internet. you send packets when you send data, you receive packets when you receive data. the nagle's algorithm regulates how packets are sent. it groups together a few bytes before sending them off as 1 packet. this ensures higher efficiency and avoiding congestion collapse of data traffic since less packets needed to be sent in this way. with this enabled, all the bits and bytes from your game will have to wait until there's enough of them to form a packet. no packet will be sent to the game server until enough of them has accumulated. this is bad for the latency since latency is measured by how many seconds does it take to send and receive packets. disabling the nagle's algorithm solves the latency problem by sending off every bits and bytes as soon as they are created, lowering the latency for real.
after all those lag cutting steps, there are still some numbers in your game ping counter. these are called distance lag which there is no technology available to solve this. these are the latency caused by the distance between your pc and the target server. the further the distance, the higher the latency. think of this as driving a car. if you wanna go from penang to lets say sarawak(ok, maybe not by driving), it takes a longer time compared if you wanted to go to kedah which is hell alot closer. now, the base latency cant be improved, but what you can do is improve the connection from your pc to the target server. the most basic way is to get better ISP(Internet Service Provider). a good ISP will route your connection using the best possible way hence your latency is lower. but a bad ISP(akhemmmstreamyxakhemm) will route your connection through alot of congested DSLAM and out through Melaka and the wrong way around the world until your connection ends up in Holland(which is a nice tourism spot) and back to the target server. lol joking, but they do route it in the most stupidest way. also, use a fibre optic line instead of a DSL line will also lower your ping significantly since fibre optic is faster and also speed of light is faster than speed of electron. another thing to keep in mind is to NOT use wireless internet. no matter its wifi, wimax, wireless broadband, 3g, 4g, 5g..... bla bla bla... they're not safe due to increased radiation(srsly, try putting a chicken near a wimax transmitter tower and it'll gt microwaved to perfection), they're costly, they're usually congested due to large amount of user, prone to DC(disconnection) and waves still travel slower than electron and light.
k, if you wanna know your latency and stuff. go to speedtest and ping it to any server you like.
