This is weird. Yesterday (and always) I could get decent pings in Counterstrike, but today I turned on the computer and suddenly I'm pinging in the 200-400 range. I've double-checked that the Windows firewall is off and offhand I can't identify any running processes that would be eating up the bandwidth (no file sharing apps or anything).

Any ideas why my connection is suddenly no good?

Peak time

Downed or damaged lines

Dropped packages

Gimped upload



You pick one.

When Steam asked for your connection speed, what did you choose?

in a cmd prompt type "tracert IP" where IP is the IP of the CS server, and see if it's on you and your ISP's end, if so give them a ring and ask what's up.

Also, type net_graph 3 in the console and tell us what you see. Especially loss/choke.

IIRC you are from Toronto. What's your ISP? Try http://speedtest.net/ to see what kind of speed and ping you get to their servers. There's tons of CS servers in Southern Ontario so if you have high speed you should find plenty with 20-40 ping.

NetGraph: I have 200-500 in, 63 out. Loss hovers around zero, choke goes from under 10 to around 50. Tracert says "unable to resolve system name", and I haven't made any typos. Speedtest rates me at 205 ms ping, 1240 kb down and 528 up. I'm on Bell Sympatico DSL.

Edit - also, my brother has got the fastest option selected in Steam. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the Sympatico network.

It might also be a temporary problem with your ISP or the outer network. It's happened to me before, and just waiting fixed it.

Are your rates set right?

Sounds like you're dropping packets.

205 ping to the speedtest server as well points to ISP problems. It's probably not on your end.

If you change your connection setting to DSL/Cable 2M (under settings in Steam) it will optimize your rates ingame, but I doubt that will solve the current problem. I doubt they'll be very helpful but you could give Bell a call.

Ah, that blows. Well, I guess I'll have to call the internets company. Thanks all.

i usually use the ping command (go to run, type ping google.com). during low usage times, it pings around 3-5 ms, during normal usage times, it pings around 30 ms, and during really ****ty times (an hour a day usually around 6) it pings around 200 ms.