Tremulous Forum
Community => Servers => Topic started by: ZedSlayer on August 05, 2011, 10:11:12 pm
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What is 'ping' and why is it important?
I tried Google, but couldn't really understand what the heck it was saying.
Thank you all.
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In multiplayer online video games, ping refers to the network latency between a player's computer (client), and either the game server or another client (i.e. peer). This could be reported quantitatively as an average time in milliseconds, or qualitatively as low ping or high ping. The latter usage is common among players of first-person shooter and real-time strategy games. Having a low ping is always desirable because lower latency provides smoother gameplay by allowing faster updates of game data. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(video_gaming))
Let me google that for you bro! (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=video+game+ping+)
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It's the time taken in milliseconds for data to travel between you and the server, it's important when games don't use any kind of lag compensation as the lower your ping the less you need to compensate manually and the better you're able to play, with unlagged it's still an issue but a relatively high ping is no longer a serious barrier to play, it just causes some peculiarities.
Ping is primarily down to your physical distance from the server, if you connect to servers on the same continent you'll often find that you get a better(lower) ping.
This is all very simplistic and i'm sure things like packet loss and it's effect on ping are important, but i don't really know enough to attempt to explain that.
This may help,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping
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- Knock knock.
- Who's there?
- Ping.
- Pong.
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Thank you guys!
I appreciate it!