Alright, I've been booted a few too many times now for my ping being too high.First, what is the "ping" and second how do I lower it? :confused:

"Ping" is the time in msec it takes from a command to go from your computer to the server and then back to you. This number is usually in the last column when you press tab for the list of server players and their scores.

Unfortunately there are no tweaks for really lowering your ping. The only thing that will lower you ping is a faster connection such as cable or dsl.

From the sound of things, you're on dial-up, and like Mr. said there's not a whole lot you can do to lower your ping without switching to broadband. Having been a gamer most of life that's had to deal with the woes of dial-up, I've picked up a few things along the way that help.

1. Try out different ISPs in your area. The closer the ISP is to your house the better. Most will offer some kind of 30day trial period, and if not, I've been able to talk most into setting me up a 24hr temporary account.
2. Play on servers within your region. This can usually be figured out by sorting the ping times from highest to lowest.
3. Play on servers with a smaller population ( <24 players max ) The less people on the server, the smaller your ping will be. There's been times on the CSGZ server where my ping will dip into the 120s.

Steam just recently released a patch last week that pretty much killed my CS:S experience. A lot of people are experiencing choke and ping issues so that could be part of the problem as well. Hopefully they'll release a fix in the near future as it has a lot of people pissed off.

So the lower the ping/latency number means the closer to me the server is?

For the most part, yes. How close the server's ISP is to the backbone as well as how close your ISP is to the backbone play a factor. CSGZ is based in Chicago (correct if I'm wrong) and I live in the middle of Michigan, but I get a better ping there than most Michigan servers.

zkz is right. The server is based in Chicago.

He's right again in saying it's not necessarily geograpical location that makes for better ping. I live in NYC and some NY servers ping worse for me than those farther away. It depends on how your ISP is routing your packets. Some hops have very bad connections and high latencies that kill your ping.

I donno if this needs to be said, but make sure you have all programs and applications turned off that are not needed. Browsers, IM clients all draw from your limited bandwidth, so you need to make sure they are turned off. The only IM client I have been able to play with, but very happily, is xfire. If you want to see all the stuff that is going on with your connection in game, in console type net_graph 3. This will display the bandwith in kbps that the server is taking, you can then find out how many people you can handle based upon the bandwith being taken.

Normally, the biggest bottleneck is your connection to the outside world, which sounds like it's dialup. Your maximum throughput is going to be the 56k modem connection you have. If you have a sweet 9ghz holographic powered PC, it's only going to get 56k chunks to deal with.

If your dialup provider has crappy lines service and you can only get 9600 baud connections, then your maximum throughput is going to be 9600.

Assuming you are getting the best connection you can to the outside world, you then want to make the most of it, so you pick servers that aren't crowded and have a low ping relative to you. Normally, these are servers that are "closer" to your ISP. Playing on a server is europe is usually slower than playing on a server in the midwest if you're in Illinois.