You will find if you want lower pings, it is best to reboot the (router) and get a new PPPoE session established. This can differ 2-3 ms at times. Don't reboot your modem as this may upset DLM.
What will happen is you'll be given a new IP address by your provider, each time you reboot. Disconnecting the ethernet cable to the WAN port may also work.
Keep trying until your happy and find your best results.
I manage to get ping as low at 9ms using this method, if you game the lower the better obviously.
Hope this helped!
IP starting at 109.xx gives me the lowest latency (8-9ms) to 1st hop. Used to be 6-7ms with just W9980 connected. Seems like HG612 increases it by another 1-2ms due to packets going through 2 CPUs I assume.
Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.22]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.2
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * 8 ms 8 ms 31.55.185.193
4 8 ms 9 ms 9 ms 31.55.185.200
5 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms core1-hu0-8-0-5.colindale.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.127.146]
6 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 62.172.103.13
7 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 194.74.65.42
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms ae0.er01.telhc.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.109]
11 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 132.185.255.148
12 10 ms 10 ms 9 ms 212.58.244.22
Trace complete.
Was getting about 17ms to bbc when interleaved.