No idea why your meter is jumpy, no one I know has this problem, although I've seen posts of people complaining about it.
On the disconnects, just because the game say it has having connection issues it's not necessarily meaning it's coming from your end. It could be on WGT's end, or anywhere along any of the many servers your signal has to go through to get from you to them. Remember you aren't hardwired directly into WGT's server so your connection is not a direct route.