My friend has Ve**on DSL service @ 768KBPS. He plays a lot of online games, and has complained about ping as high as 250 on the servers. He is also knocked off of them due to this problem. I am not educated highly in internet (mostly stay in Audio/Video and CPU sections of the forum), and I was wondering if a diagnosis could be made for him. Also note that he is quite a distance away from the central service center (I know that DSL slows as it is extended far from the C.S.C). Thanks in advance :wave: !

Does your friend have a router? Maybe try connecing without it?
Does your friend use any p2p programs that may be hogging the connection? Maybe close these?
Does your friend have a software firewall? Maybe try disabling that (and use the Windows builtin one)?

He has the Windows Firewall, and Norton Firewall (which I find annoying). That's about it. He only has one computer so no router is installed. Note that this happens of Counter Strike: Source.

One firewall is enough. Two can lead to conflicts and headache causing troubleshooting complexity. Try one at a time and see if there is a diff. You could also turn 'em both off to check performance and then turn one and/or the other back on.
Monton