If you're connecting to spotty wifi, how to position you're laptop(or wifi adapter) helps a lot. This works better if you have a wifi adapter with an adjustable antenna.
on Windows to use the ping command hold the Windows key and R. Type in cmd and hit enter.
type ping and the ip(or url) of a resource that's ussually online quite a bit and you'd want to connect to without much latency.
Googles dns server are a good example. On Windows to ping a server continuously you type ping 8.8.8.8 -t (the ip here is google's dns) Once you are finished hit ctrl + c (or close the command prompt window. )
On linux this is similar except you dont have to follow the address with the -t, the ping command on most linux distributions defaults to pinging forever until you hit CTRL + C(or you close your terminal emulator)
the time in ms you want to be as low as you can get it. Move the antenna around or move your laptop around where ever you are until the time goes down and there's less drops of the ping.
