[Data Center USA] Ping increased. Report your changes here.

[Random0]

Can someone explain to the laymen out here what exactly is considered in a ping? I am in Indiana, play on aether, and I just speedtested to Sacramento and I was at 79 ping? I would have thought it would be a lot worse than that??

it's how long it takes for a packet of data to get from you to the server and back. but being in indiana you are probably close to the chicago backbone which is a big chunk of fibre basically that moves it to Cali pretty fast.

I think this needs to be something to consider. A little research brings up that the former hosts of the NA data center was Ormuco near Montreal, a hosting company that manages data for many different companies and it seems like Level 3 Communications was the Tier 1 network provider most traffic passed through.

If the evidence suggesting that the XIV NA servers have moved to one of NTT's Sacramento data centers turns out to be correct, then we have to factor in the fact that NTT is itself one of the Tier 1 network providers. They don't connect to the internet backbone - they ARE one of the internet backbones. This is like SE moving their shop from one of the town's back alleys to a new location right on Main Street.

So even if the 'shop' is further away for some people, the road leading to it is much more direct and can handle a lot more traffic than before. We may have to wait until things go live to see how routing tables resolve to determine just what changes to everyone's connections will be.