Online gaming-Ping rates

I have MSI K7N2 Delta Motherboard, 2.4 Athlon XP processor, Geforce 4Ti4600 platinum graphics card, 512 DDR memory, XP Home edition, 1024 Creative Labs soundcard, BT broadband connection.

Anyway at the start of the week I had all of the above except I was running Windows ME and had a steady average ping rate of approx 50.

Had XP installed and they have tripled. In the morning/afternoon the ping rate is low, but at night it goes up and sometimes fluctuates wildly.

I tried another PC I have at the same time it was high and the ping would appear the same, but I'm not convinced it's nothing to do with my machine.

Does anyone have any ideas how to lower it again or is it simply the telephone service providor who's at fault.

Any suggestions to do with my machine, simpletons language please, XP is brand new to me.

Thanks in advance.

It might be something to do with your MTU size. However its most likely just a poor ADSL connection. I know that my Freeserve (UK) pings are usually in the range of 15-30 for british servers and more like 60 for servers in the US.

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