This is bugging me like crazy: When I play online I usually have good ping, about 100 or less. But just about everyday my ping goes down the toilet in the middle of a game. The bad ping (+500) usually stays for a couple of hours, sometimes less, sometimes more, then it goes back to normal. On occasions like this I usually check my bandwidth. Sometimes itīs really crappy because of some kid in my house downloading warez. But usually the bandwidth is ok, about 0.5 - 1 Mbit/sec, but the ping is still terrible. When I run tracert it shows that the bad ping is due to the first jump (default gateway?) in the line. So hereīs my questions: Why does the first step in the chain have such bad times/ping sometimes and what can I do about it? /JP

it depends on many factors, such as the load on the server you are connecting to, time of day, type of routing protocol you are using. list goes on.