The quality of play will depend on the speed and quality of the connection between you and your opponent. Heavy network traffic, poor cabling, line noise, latency, and other environmental effects can greatly detract from the reliability and performance of a multi-player game. The performance of a multi-player game is directly determined by a player's quality of connection to that game. Latency is one of the major factors of a player's connection. It is the measure of time that it takes for a player's system to send and receive information over a network or to and from another computer.
Ping is another factor of a player's connection and gaming performance.
It is the speed of a player's connection, or the time it takes for a data signal to travel to another player or game server, and back to a player's computer. It is measured in milliseconds where the larger the number equals a longer time delay. Therefore, most people want to establish as low of a ping as possible. Players who have direct connection to the Internet like here at I.S.U will have a really low ping when connecting to a game server, usually less than 100ms. However, modem players get stuck with pings anywhere from 200-500ms.