Thinking of upgrading your system or uninstalling the game just because you can’t find servers or to be frank you hate the way your online gameplay experience is currently going ? In this case few little tricks can make way for lag free online gaming.

I am posting some links to tools, websites, tips and other “thingamajigs” which might enhance your online gameplay experience. You might want to read the following.

1. Game-monitor - Gamemonitor will help you find all the servers and HLTVs located in your country. For anyone using Firefox an add-on is also available here.

2. GUIs(Graphical User Interface) - Most FPS games are pretty slow and sometimes impossible to play when you have a low system configuration. This is where custom GUIs come in. These can either enhance the look or the remodel the characters that can help reduce system lag. Check out Fpsbanana and Gotfrag for GUIs.

3. Gamerail - If your Internet Service Provider is game-ignorant, you can register yourself with this site. GameRail’s private gamer only network directly connects gamers to their favorite game servers by bridging the connection between ISPs and game server hosts. GameRail’s superior routing technology intelligently sends your game traffic on the fastest, smoothest path, bypassing Internet lag. However, the service is currently available in USA and Canada.

4. Scripts to lower the eye-candy - If your computer can’t stand all the realistic looking objects inside the game, you might as well follow the law of Yosemite Sam, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. Check out this page and click your desired script and follow the instructions carefully. I recommend you make a backup of any file you are going to edit.

5. I have an excellant ping times, why the hell everything still laggy?!! - This might be due to packet loss. This is a moment where you get ’stuck’ for 5 to 15 secs and in most cases you might get an error message like,” ERROR = Packet Loss”. This usually happens due to a firewall or any other program which lists the game in the white list but still monitors the incoming packets from the server. The best way to do that is to port forward the required ports manually. Port-Forward has an excellent tutorial on port-forwarding and there are ports listed for the associated games.