Does internet connection affect online gaming?

[Q]

I play a lot of Halo 3 and CoD, and a lot of bullets seem to vanish into thin air. I have Verizon DSL.

In Halo 3, it takes 12 bullets from a BR to kill a player in standard matchmaking. Many times I find myself hitting them with far more than 12 shots. Is this due to MY internet? Or is online gaming in general just slow? Today I watched a Halo 3 game in theater mode and watched very closely. I saw 15 bullets hit the enemy; 5 bursts, and every shot hit... The last 3 which were in the head.

In CoD, I shot 4 shotgun shots at an enemy, yet he killed me. When I watch the killcam... It says nothing fired from my gun? This even happens when I have host... so I don't know wtf is up with online games.

So does this happen to everyone? Even people with elite internet connection?
It's not lag. The games run smooth, but bullets just don't register sometimes.
The fact that you guys don't know what I'm talking about eaither means:
1. You don't play these games
2. My inernet sucks.

[RebeccaS]

that depends on if you are online when playing the game. if you are then yes it can usually slow the game down and if you are using a laptop and there are other people using different laptops from the same source that can also slow it down if you are not online.

[Tony]

your internet connection, your speed, your signal strength will all play a factor in your online play. get Broadband internet connection from your local internet provider, Dial up stinks. uhhh if you have a bad connection you may get disconnected from games or even experience serious Lag *EDIT* since you play Halo i assume you have a 360, i have a PS3 ive played MW2 online but i mainly play Bad company 2 online. i used to suffer from some lag but that was just the Servers that they fixed already. my internet wasnt the problem. i would have assumed it was your internet connection at first but if your not getting signed out or Exited from games it cant be it. im sorry i couldnt be of help hopefully somebody else will get back to you

[Omar Pasos]

well the internet connection would affect the game but you would notice that is lagging, either that or it would disconnect you, I couldnt tell you what it is if you are saying that the games run smooth but if they do then it wouldnt be the internet connection.

[chris m]

Your speed might be fine, but it seems that you are dropping packets (information doesn't make it to the destination, or to you). This might have something to do with your open ports, or more likely the quality of your internet connection. Speed isn't everything. If you're in the middle of nowhere, then your packets are traveling very far, which requires many repeaters, thus it would cause massive packet loss. That seems to be the problem... I'd recommend getting a better quality internet service, like FiOS (it's all light as opposed to electricity sending data, hence it can go farther with less packet loss).