Can anyone please explain what are the best ways to bring my machines 'ping rate' down and have a faster connection for online gaming?

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Well to get a lower ping you need to get a faster line
You can also turn down all of your settings in the game. Put it on a small resolution, with detail at minimums (yet still playable). Also try and check our tweak guides

Really my man, as Poertner said, the only thing you are REALLY gonna notice is a better connection technology. Cable or ASDL will be your main choices. Some tweaks will help a little, but in the end its upgrade to broadband, basically.

OK, sounds like its gonna cost me. Thanks for the advice though.

If your ISP costs are like mine it doesnt cost much more...

Modem=$20
ADSL=$30

Thats only $120 more, which isnt too bad for what your getting.

Except, I think Ireland has some outrageous prices on DSL. It's priced pretty steep over there. He's also got the problem with most gameservers being a long ways away.

Another much easier way to get better pings is to find servers closer to you. In CS i used to play on servers all over the country (america) but a while ago i found one that was in oregon, which is one state away from me. I get a great ping on dsl, about 20-30, and my friend on 56k gets low 100s

That is a good point, the less distance you have to connect the better.

A shorter distance won't allways matter as much as one should think...

I played halflife on a server in Oslo (the city I live in), and was getting a very good ping, but the game felt sluggish...

I loaded up an english server and everything felt fine...

So I did a little checking and found that there was over 20 "hops" (servers/switches) between me and the server in Oslo, but only 13 to the english server...

I recommend using GameSpy3d or another program which allows you to check how many hops there are between you and the server you're pinging...

The less hops you've got to go through, the better!