You are in the middle of a clutch round. Your ping has been a steady 25 ms all night. Suddenly it jumps to 300, you rubber-band into a doorway, and you die. Ten seconds later, it drops back to 25 like nothing happened. What just happened is a ping spike, and it is one of the most frustrating things about online gaming because it looks random.
Most ping spikes are not actually random. They are caused by something specific: a device on your network suddenly grabbing bandwidth, a scheduled OS update kicking in, Wi-Fi interference from a neighbor's network, or routing changes at your ISP shifting your traffic through a slower path. Some are caused by the game server itself under load. Very few are caused by your total speed being too low.
The first line of defense is a good wired connection and Quality of Service settings that prioritize gaming traffic. The second is upgrading to a connection type — usually fiber — where the underlying network is less prone to congestion. For a checklist of what to try before blaming your ISP, this EarthLink guide on beating lag with the right internet speed is a helpful starting point.
