Firstly I'd like to say that there is a hell a lot of great advice offered, that would benifiet most people with the day to day running of their computers, and a huge thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge.
With over 25yrs of knowledge and experience in the IT indtrusty myself, it's good to see people willing to share. In my early years as a 'computer nerd', I spent a lot of my time configuring games and systems for people because no one knew how to make them work. Hacking as most would have called it became a way of life for some of us.
Having read about 75% of the posts in this, thread now, I am amazed that NOT ONE of you have touched on the most basic and logical reason for the shitty meter and it;s eratic behavour.
Stop and think for a second... we are all playing an ON-LINE game!
So with that one little statement in mind, what does this tell us???
Answer: We are all playing, and therefore downloading/uploading the game content and everything that makes the game what it is, from the same server.
Reality check... this means we must SHARE the limitted resources being presented by the server(s) hosting the game. The more people on-line - the less of a slice of the pie we all get. The smaller the peice - the slower the responce times - the slower the game play & apparent reactive responce/refresh times.
Also, consider that for all non US countries, there is generally only a limitted amount of bandwith servicing their connection to the web, and there are times (local times) when the financial community seem to absorb the bulk of this in order to move funds etc all over the world.
And one final point to remember in all of this... IT'S ONLY A GAME!
Cheers and enjoy the site for what it is, cm68.