Lately I’ve been getting horrible lag on every server I play on - even ones very close to me geographically. My connection is fine, 97% efficiency, but I get extreme lag when I play. My pings never go below 110, they’re usually above 200. I used to be able to get around 90 ping consistently on some servers - but now the lag is horrible there too. I have a feeling my lag problem is system-related… any ideas? 
:disgust:
You (or someone you share your connect with) leave kaza or some such running ? Some virus/trojans can also use up your bandwidth. If you see lots of traffic on your modem or router while nothing is running on your computer, that would be a sign.
It could be something actually happened to your connection. Have you tried ping or tracert from a command prompt ?
What I would do is tracert to something sure to work like google, or your dns server.
Then figure out which hop is the one just past your isdn/dsl/cable modem (usually the first or second depending if you have a router or not). Typically, this will be the first hop which is about 20-40ms. Once you have that, ping it with something like
ping -n 100 -l 1000 the.ip.address.of.the.hop.past.your.modem
That says to do 100 pings with 1000 byte packets. Larger packets tend to show up network problems more often. You will probably notices that these ping times are longer than normal. That is just an effect of the larger packets. If you get more than a few packets lost, you most likely have a problem with your connection to your ISP. If it is fine, the problem could be farther down the line. You can repeat the process with hops farther down the line.
You can do the same thing with the first hop (between your machine and the modem) to make sure it isn’t a bad ethernet cable there.
If the out of game stuff seems fine, try using the ip addresses of some of the game servers.
Oh, and if you haven’t rebooted your system and modem since the trouble started, try that first.
I’ve restarted my modem several times, because ocassionally the DSLAM at Qwest goes shit and I lose my connection… I’ve restarted my computer several times too after removing programs I don’t need, etc… I don’t run any bandwidth hogging programs in the background, mainly IRC and Mozilla… but when I check the memory usage, they’re only using about 20mb total of my 512mb. (Soon I’ll get DDR400 so I can crank my FSB up from 133 to 333, which is my max… but I also need a better power supply, as of now I’m using about 90% of the power constantly.)
I’m doing the pings and traceroutes now…
if youre getting bad lag to all servers when you had none before, first thing to do is run tracert to the servers you know are usually fine. If those turn out normal, no lag and ping seems fine - it might be PB.
same thing happened to me - i was told to lower my com_maxfps to 60 - and to my amazement, the lag went away(who knew). I set it to 76 b/c I also read thats a good straffe jumping fps.
/com_maxfps 76
gl
Trace google.com (216.239.51.100) ...
1 192.168.0.1 0ms 0ms 0ms TTL: 0 (No rDNS)
2 hiding.my.ip.address 45ms 43ms 45ms TTL: 0 (hiding.my.host.name ok)
3 10.57.2.1 46ms 46ms 44ms TTL: 0 (ge200.cis004cor01.bea1.easy.easystreet.com ok)
4 209.162.220.71 44ms 46ms 46ms TTL: 0 (fe3-0.cis003bdr03.bea1.easy.easystreet.com ok)
5 157.130.176.145 46ms 48ms 66ms TTL: 0 (Serial4-2.GW3.POR2.ALTER.NET ok)
6 152.63.105.158 46ms 47ms 70ms TTL: 0 (124.at-2-0-0.XR2.POR3.ALTER.NET ok)
7 152.63.104.69 46ms 47ms 46ms TTL: 0 (190.ATM7-0.BR1.POR3.ALTER.NET ok)
8 208.172.83.201 50ms 50ms 50ms TTL: 0 (acr1-at-2-0-0.Seattle.cw.net ok)
9 208.172.83.46 62ms 54ms 49ms TTL: 0 (acr2-ae0.Seattle.cw.net ok)
10 206.24.226.100 114ms 115ms 115ms TTL: 0 (dcr2-loopback.Washington.cw.net ok)
11 206.24.238.166 115ms 116ms 115ms TTL: 0 (bhr1-pos-10-0.Sterling1dc2.cw.net ok)
12 216.109.66.90 117ms 118ms 117ms TTL: 0 (csr11-ve241.Sterling2dc3.cw.net ok)
13 216.109.88.218 115ms 116ms 114ms TTL: 0 (218-google-exodusdc.exodus.net probable bogus rDNS: No DNS)
14 No Response * * *
15 No Response * * *
16 No Response * * *
17 216.239.51.100 118ms 122ms 121ms TTL: 45 (www.google.com fraudulent rDNS)
Fast traceroute results for google.com… :\
First: fine, no ethernet problems
Second: 0 packet loss between me and myself (:moo:)
Third: no response, 100% packet loss
Fourth: net destination unreachable
Fifth: 0% packet loss, average 95ms
Sixth: 0% packet loss, average 97ms
Seventh: 0 loss, 97ms
Eigth: 0 loss, avg 109ms
Ninth: 0 loss, avg 109ms
Tenth: destination unreachable
Eleventh: 0 loss, avg 176ms (?! O_O, some pings were over 400)
Twelfth: 0 loss, 170ms
Thirteenth: 0 loss, 170ms
14-16: no ip, adfh;akhf
17: 0 loss, avg 166
gah, my graphics card can’t get that much of an fps anyhow… i uncapped once, and got around 150 looking at the ground, and got CI… but other than that, my fps doesn’t reach more than 70 in game usually, more around 30.
The ones with 100% packet loss are probably just ignoring your pings. For some unfathomable reason, some ISPs think it is OK to configure their equipment to do this 
Destination unreachable is odd. Are you sure you typed (or copy/pasted) the IP correctly ?
In any case, if you can ping the ones farther down the line without PL, it implies the one in between are OK.
If those pings are with 1k packets, it looks like your DSL line is doing fine. If I were you, I’d try tracert to one of the servers that used to be low ping.
You can look on www.dslreports.com and see if anyone else in your area is complaining about that ISP.
Double check your et config, to make sure you didn’t set it back to modem settings or anything. This is especially important if the servers just swtiched to shrubet, because et will make you a new copy of your config for shrub. IT should carry your setting over, but RTCW was known to screw that up.
If you don’t have cg_drawfps on, turn it on to see if some config issue made your FPS drop. Low enough FPS will cause you to start dropping updates and lagging.
If you have another game (quake3, rtcw, unreal) try that and see if that is also lagging.
The servers haven’t changed, no one else is getting any problems… I’m having trouble with the same thing in RTCW too. I think it’s something on my system :\
Backup your work and important stuff, format the bitch and start again. It’s the only way to be sure. I think a regular format and reinstall is a good thing.
You are a victim of bad routing -
a reinstall wont help w/ that.
best thing to do is tracert alot of servers then send it to your ISP and ask them to help you
What are the upstream/downstream bandwidth specs for your xDSL connection? I would say that the problem lies with this:
2 hiding.my.ip.address 45ms 43ms 45ms TTL: 0 (hiding.my.host.name ok)
You’re getting a latency of 45 ms on your modem-to-ISP hop already. That’s way too much for a typical DSL setup, IMHO. Look at my traceroute to Google, via an ADSL 786/128 connection:
Note that the modem-to-ISP hop in my case only takes 15 ms. Also, my total round-trip time to Google is similar to yours, but I’m on the other side of the Atlantic.
Are you sure your ISP hasn’t changed the bandwidth settings of your connection lately? You might want to contact your ISP and let them check those.
HTH.
Ive had some problems with this happening too but as the ET server is running in the ISP I know its not connection/ routing related.
Ive changed the settings based on this chart and it seems to have resolved the issue. Give it a shot and see if it helps you.
http://www.q3acn.com/?action=column&column_id=74