The take home message should be that there are so many things going on in the internet that it is unreasonable to assume it is the THF server. ANYTHING from the server to your computer could be a part of the problem. We just have had the bufferbloat tests made easily available to the public, although the problem has been known in the internet for years.
The information in the posts above is just a way of testing the quality of your internet connection. The test developers actually advise not to have your computer and internet doing anything to do but the test. The first test above was done in Vex Thal with 4 groups (24 characters) being simultaneously handled by my internet connection across 3 workstations. The second test was done with nothing going through the internet but the test. The point is...it is NOT bandwidth per se.... with 24 characters active I only use about 8 mbps of bandwidth including both uploads and downloads. What IS the problem is what the internet connection does when being used.
As the graphs and grade (F) try to show, when more bandwidth is used the upload speed gets hugely delayed, over a half second. In Vex Thal during a fight I can have one character seeing a dead boss and the other character lagging as much as 5 minutes behind seeing the same boss at 60 percent. This of course, really sucks.
Bufferbloat occurs because your IP and all the internet connections twixt you and the THF server use memory to even out the flow of traffic, so that delayed internet information forms Buffer Bloat.
The idea to cure this is to have your router the slowest link in the chain between your computer and the THF server and then have new and specialized queue algorithms mitigate that problem. As a result, none of the memory storing devices between the THF server and your router are activated and things move fast. Only at your router do they slow down. The cheapest and one of the best cures is said to be provided by a good router with firmware provided by DD-WRT and/or LEED. You can also buy a router with this all set up but for considerably more: IQRV2 Self-Optimizing router with dual band WiFi (AC1750). This runs about $150, DD-WRT solution for about $40.
Good article and more info can be found at:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13586I'll let you folks know what the new router I'm getting (option 1 via ebay) works in about a week. Mine will be a new application as the router I am getting will be only used as a bridge between my switch and a load aggregator (Peplink) that adds together four 10 mbps connections to the internet. So in my rather archane case the new router will be the slow point in the chain with the Peplink and everything else in the system running wide open.