Meaning of ping in multiplayer setup

[mrmichaeln]

Can someone please tell me what ping is and how it affects your multiplayer games?

I have cable internet (shaw light) so what would my ping be?

Thanks.

[CrONoS]

Ping is the time between when you throw your ball against a wall and when you receive the ball...
It's the time, when your computer send data to another computer and receive data from the computer.
If your ping is 200, it's take 200 millisecond to send and receive data.
In Medal Of Honor, Wolfenstein, Warcraft 3 I Can play lagless with a ping of 250.. but 250 it's my MAXIMUM PING to play. But in Civ3:PTW.... better have a ping of <150.

have a nice day

[statusperfect]

And that's because in 3d shooters / RTS you don't really see what happens. The computer calculates the movement of everything and then updates positions/movement orders every 200 milliseconds. THis is not possible in a game like Civ3. The lag is the same... but in TBS it isn't camouflaged.

[ACooper]

I played a game this weekend with one person whose ping was always near 500. (I was desperate.) There was a little lag but not terrible.

My ping is usually around 100 give or take a few (good cable modem) and I know as a network engineer that stability is more important than ping by a long shot. I have found that I have found more problems with peoples computers more than anything else. If they do not have their computers properly configured they will not have a good game.

Also make sure you are not running any other programs at the same time as PTW. PTW is a memory hog and will run your resources down quickly.

have fun......

[mrmichaeln]

Thanks for the replies.

Is there a way to figure out what my computer's ping is?

[Swissy]

Originally posted by mrmichaeln
Thanks for the replies.

Is there a way to figure out what my computer's ping is?

Ping is figured between computers. You'll have different pings to every player. In the server screen, the ping for a game is your computer to the host computer.