When you say "how can I reduce it", that tells me that you're asking about ping from a gamer's perspective, and that is how I will approach this question. However, note that the word "ping" is actually the name for a TCP/IP connectivity troubleshooting tool. The ping tool works by having your computer send some packets (chunks of data) to another computer and then wait for a response. The ping you're probably thinking of is what some people call "latency", the more appropriate term for it. Network latency is sometimes called ping because the ping tool reports the results of a ping in milliseconds (ms), the amount of time it took for the packets sent from your computer to reach the other computer and back. So, to sum up, the ping you're thinking of is another word for latency, used to describe how long it took for a computer to answer when your computer tried to contact it. There are many factors that affect network latency, and I will describe the ways that a gamer on his or her home computer could reduce it: a. Close all running background (and maybe foreground) programs that are eating up your connection bandwidth. Bandwidth is another term that's important to this discussion, and I like to use an analogy I've heard many times before - bandwidth is how big your "Internet pipe" is, and latency is how fast stuff can travel through the pipe. High bandwidth and low latency is what you want your connection to have, and as more stuff travels through the Internet pipe (bandwidth gets smaller), latency gets higher simply because more stuff is trying to get through. If you use up all of your available bandwidth and you try to use more, you'll see your latency skyrocket due to packet loss. Packet loss simply means that little chunks of data going to and coming from your computer are getting dropped as they try to go through the pipe, and it's not a good thing. The point I'm trying to make is that closing any and all programs that eat up bandwidth, such as file-sharing programs will reduce your latency due to less stuff trying to go through the pipe. b. Related to letter "a", if you're on a network with other users sharing your connection bandwidth, tell them not to do anything that sucks up a lot of that bandwidth while you're playing. You're all on the same connection and your bandwidth isn't infinite; if a couple people are hogging all the bandwidth, others who are doing less network-intensive activities will feel it. c. Update your network card/modem drivers. This is extremely important, as new drivers often bring network performance boosts. d. In some cases, high latency and disconnects from game servers may be caused by a problem on your end, but not with your computer. Faulty/misconfigured modems, faulty/poor wiring and other conditions related to your connection to your ISP may be at fault. The best way to address this possible problem is to contact your ISP and have them check out your connection. e. If you are behind a firewall or a NAT router, you may need to configure them to allow the game in question to access certain ports. A port is a channel that data coming to and going from your computer travels on, and different games use different ports. Consult your game publisher's website or documentation for what you need to do if certain ports are being blocked. f. If your connection latency is high, it may not be the fault of your computer or connection to your ISP; instead, it may lie with the ISP's equipment itself or with a specific "hop" on the path that packets take from your computer to the game server in question. There is an easy way to see if there's a problem along that path, and it's called a trace route. A trace route, performed with the tracert command, shows you all of the "hops" along the aforementioned path and can tell you if a specific hop is the problem. To do a trace route in Windows, open a command prompt window and type the following: tracert (domain name or IP address) In the parentheses, after the tracert (but without the parentheses), you would put the IP address or domain name (like blah.com) of the game server you're trying to connect to. Hit Enter and take a look at the results. If your ISP or a firewall isn't blocking outbound ICMP (ping and tracert) traffic from your computer/network, you should see many numbers, next to the letters "ms". These numbers show you the latency of the connection. If you see some asterisks (*) as well, this indicates that the router at the hop in question (one of my answers on this site explains in detail what a router is) is blocking ICMP traffic or is actually dropping packets. In either case, you would look at the name or IP address on the same line as the asterisks to find out who to contact about them. For example, if I ran a trace route to a server, saw some asterisks on a line and on the same line I saw the name comcast.net, I would be contacting Comcast (a cable ISP) and asking them what's up. Seeing lots of asterisks that aren't due to blocked ICMP traffic is a problem.