A question regarding LAG/Ping on game servers.

[Wayne D]

I have a question regarding ping times in game servers:


I've noticed when playing several online games that ping times go up as 
more players connect.
I also run a small game server here at my house and have witnessed this 
issue first-hand. The processing overhead of the game is actually quite 
small even with 12 players and I suspect it would not go above 25 to 30%.

This issue doesn't make any sense to me when we are talking about no 
more than 12 players connected.
My bandwidth both up and down are sufficient to handle the traffic with 
plenty of room to spare.

The extra overhead on a single pipe in my mind should not make any 
difference considering the processor speeds are so much faster than the 
data travelling across the Internet. From my perspective, I should be 
able to connect 100 different players and see no change in lag/ping TO 
EACH PLAYER.  I understand that all players have to go through the 
protocol stack on the net card but that shouldn't matter correct?

Or, is the actual problem the network card itself? Is that the reason 
for the lag? If so, is there a type of card that I should be looking for 
“high throughput"?

Could somebody elaborate on the mechanics of this?

Thanks in advance.