improving ping

now, i know next to nothing about internet and how it's handled, so i need some advice on this.

with the mAT looming on saturday, i really need to find a way to lower my ping. currently it usually average at the 250ish mark... but i've seen it dip to 80. the real problem is that it's inconsistent: it can be at 80ish at one minute, and go up to 300 the next.

i'm currently using a Roger's 7mbit cable connection. my computer is also connecting through some generic wireless router, sharing the connection with my old computer.

on the day of the mAT, i'm going to connect my gaming pc directly to my cable modem, which will probably lower my ping by a little bit. what i want to know is: is there anything else i can do to lower my ping... or at least make it a bit more consistent? i heard there are registry tweaks that i can do to improve ping, but i don't know what they are.

i'm using vista 64bit btw. the computer's specs are not an issue.

PS: [rYi] for bronze!

There's been a lot of problem with pings in GW lately, for a lot of people. It seems to be a general Internet problem which may or may not directly involve ANet. I doubt that there is much you can do on your end. Plugging your cable modem directly into your computer might get you an extra .1 ms or so.

We have a winner!!!!!

The Internets Infrastructure was not designed for what it is being used for today. It is having problems and its only going to get worse. Next year IPv6 goes active which addes a ton of IP addresses. Fan-frickin-tastic. This means more and more devices other than computers will be "online". There is some scientists that beleive the internets is going to overload and crash within 3 years. IPv6 will not add to the solution... Its gonna get fun. A viable solution is "in the works" as server 2008 and vista 64 increase packet size to 1GB from 10Mb. This is a good thing if the wires can handle it. We need a fiber based infrastructure.

Edited to IPv6

IPv6 is going live, haven't heard of IPv9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

IPv9 redirects to Internet Protocol.

lol. I meant 6. I have been typing mac address, serial numbers and asset numbers for a few hundred parts at work for the past few days. At least I made my mistake here.