Hi Tiger,
That's an incorrect interpretation of what PING is telling you.
When you PING a
computer it sends a single packet of information to the server and that
packet is returned to your PC. It does not go straight from your computer to a
WGT server. Your data "hops" over 20 to 30 servers before it reaches
ours. The slow ping response just means that's how long the trip took and does
not indicate that our servers are on the "melt down".
You can verify this by using a tracert instead of a ping. Tracert shows your packet's trip step by step.
Here's the 2nd half of a trace from my PC to WGT.com:
Tracing route to wgt.com [66.70.125.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
16 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms ae-6-6.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.141.21]
17 93 ms 103 ms 108 ms ae-2-2.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.135.185]
18 100 ms 93 ms 104 ms ae-94-94.csw4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.254]
19 98 ms * 95 ms ae-44-99.car4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.198]
20 96 ms 95 ms 96 ms Border2.sjc.datapipe.net [166.90.143.178]
21 96 ms 100 ms 98 ms vl11.dist1-2.sj2.datapipe.net [66.70.119.14]
22 96 ms 97 ms 95 ms 66.70.125.43 <-- Our Server
Trace complete.
----
As you can see, there is a slow down happening during the jump from New York to San Jose. I also lost a packet in hop #19. The increase in ping from #16 to #17 is called a "bottleneck" and it occurs through servers owned by Data Centers that WGT does not control. Your high ping is a direct result of that. We do not own any servers except #22, so unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that. Perform your own tracert and you will see where the bottleneck occurs for you. The internet is always in a constant state of flux, so things like this will always happen no matter what.
The assumption that latency, ping or internet connection speed affects your meter is completely false. The "high traffic" rumors are as well. Even during the busiest of times there is hardly a dent in server capacity.
Your meter (and most of the game itself) is rendered locally on your PC by files that are stored in your cache. Everything with the swing happens on the user end with no dependency on the server at all. The server is waiting for your PC to send the result of the swing after the ding is clicked and will wait there all day.
The server only comes into play when the shot result has been sent. The result is sent to the server, calculated and then almost instantaneously returned to the player. The player's PC then animates those results as the flight path of the ball and you watch what happened to your shot. Once the shot is over the server communicates to the player which picture is needed and will send the next picture to the player if it's not already in their cache. This is what is happening between shots while you are "Loading..". The new picture loads and we rinse and repeat for the next shot.
Your connection speed dictates two things as it pertains to WGT:
- The speed at which you can load the website.
- The speed at which you can download and cache files between shots/holes or during the initial load.
Locking this thread since it's a necro and has been dead for nearly 2 years. If you feel the need to discuss this further then please start another thread.