> The NET indicator is displayed when a client has not received any packets from the server in the last 300ms. This was likely aimed at players to help them determine how bad their ping was.

This is not an indicator of high ping. It's an indication of loss of connectivity. Even if your ping is 2 seconds, the server should be sending you updates regularly. If you haven't received anything in 300 ms, either you're losing lots of packets or you have some epic buffering somewhere.

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xeonmc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Example: the slow-motion replay of this demo causes the flashing of the net icon due to the packet frequency red-shift:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58

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dmurray 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In practice if you have a very high ping, you're losing packets or there's buffering somewhere. Not because you have a 30,000 km long ethernet cable.

	▲	girvo 5 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We used to play these games on dial-up where ~300ms pings were pretty common. Moving to a cable connection in ~2001 was shocking in comparison!
	▲	AdamH12113 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		When Quake(world) was released, it was common to play games on dial-up modems, where 250+ milliseconds was a normal ping time. If you played on a distant server, you could easily get over 500 milliseconds or even much worse.
	▲	toast0 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Geostationary satellite internet has garbage pings too.
	▲	garaetjjte 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Unless you are playing Quake through Iridium.