Need help with Ping (lack of)

[bigbangcanada]

I understand what Ping is, I just don't have any.

Everytime I log into MP, it shows my username with no ping number beside it. I have tries to enter via GameSpy and that doesn't work either.

Help...

[Sparrowhawk]

What kind of connection do you have?
Are you using a firewall? If yes, hardware or software?

Also, try asking in the Tech support forum if you can't get any help here... though replies there can take a while.

[farting bob]

Originally posted by bigbangcanada
I understand what Ping is, I just don't have any.

don't worry, it happens to all of us sometime during our lives, i remember not having any ping for months, but it'll come back.

seriously through. WTF is ping?

[brenjb]

I don't think you really understand ping. It's a measure of the time messages travel between two people, so you don't really have your own png, you have a ping with another person.

[Mercade]

Originally posted by farting bob
seriously through. WTF is ping?

Ping is just like the sonar on a boat. With sonar you send a sound signal and with the amount of time it takes for the pulse to get back, you can calculate how far a certain object is away from you.

In the computer world, it is something similar, and has existed since the early days of internet. You send a signal ('ping') to another computer, and the time it takes to get back (i.e. round trip) is an important measure in determining your network connection with the other party. While for internet, exact physical location isn't that important, but the "network distance" is.

Ping is measured in milliseconds. The lower your "ping", the better your connection with the other party, and thus the less laggy you are.

Ping also measures the amount of packets that get lost somewhere in the bowels of the big bad net. Of course, if a packet gets lost, then it needs to be resent, which causes extra delay. For a game like :rocket: the packet loss isn't too important (it makes the game a bit jumpy, but otherwise you're fine) but for Civ3 is it very relevant because the game needs to make sure that every packet is received (and in the right order).

[bigbangcanada]

Sparrow, thanks for the reply

I have a DSL connection with no firewall.

I'll post in the the tech support section too.

Thanks in advance.

[metalhead]

Just to clarify, for you and everyone else, when you are in MP, you don't have one set PING value. You have a a PING with each computer in the staging window, and your PING with their computer is the number displayed next to that players name.

[handyandy]

ping is the number of milliseconds for 32bytes (i think it is 32) of data to get to the remote computer and back.

[sabo]

You aren't going to see a ping rate with yourself because it's 0

the ping rate between you and you is zero