Ok..pretty much since I have had Black Ops I had been getting a consistent three green bars even though I had done all I thought I could do to improve the situation.

* Lobby set to 'Local Only'
* NAT Open.
* Xbox connected direct to the modem (Ethernet)
* Playing late at night when I knew would be less sharing the contention on line to the exchange.
* What I thought was a good connection (about 8mb down 1mb up).

No matter what I tried I would rarely get more then three bars.

Not being prepared to accept this and getting more angry with consistently seeing kill cams show someone about half a second in front of me, got me seeking a solution.

I found a forum around my ISP provider 'sky uk' and a thread on ping time. The suggestion was that most ISP's have 'profiles' that they set for users. The typical standard out of the box profile set is with more download speeds in mind then 'ping time' and ping time is the one you really want for gaming. Apparently it was explained that if you called your ISP explicitly state to them your primary use the connection is for online gaming and you need a better ping, they will normally change your profile (better routing and a lower max limit (typical seems to be max limit = .

So I phoned to my ISP's broadband customer services. I got a lady on the phone who seemed to know just what I needed. She did some tests and put me on hold. After 2 minutes she came back and said try now....

I still have the results:

Pre Change:

C:\Documents and Settings<user>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=84ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=121

Pingtest.net: 92ms (Grade B)

After her tweak:

C:\Documents and Settings<user>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=121

Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=121

Pingtest.net 20ms (Grade A)

Looks like we got somewhere!

Next I loaded Black OPs and went into ground war (normally bad ground for me). I got 4 solid bars!

I have now played about 10 games and each one - bang! 4 bars. I am even doing better in the game itself and it seems playing at a disadvantage has now made me a better player now I have an equal ground to others.

Granted this may not be for everyone..I just thought I should put this up as if it helps someone as much as it has me, it's worth it all the more.

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