I'm not sure what causes it, but my notion has been that part of the high ping comes from geographic locale. Crossfire's server is in Germany, where if you're within a few hundred miles there's really no excuse to have a ping more than 100. Overseas in the states, however, pings can easily be twice that figure or even higher. There are probably other factors involved that I don't understand, but the server is pretty much quarter of the way around the world from you.