Quote Originally Posted by Karan_Vess View Post
Tracert shows the round trip for each packet for each hop individually. A game packet will not go from one hop and back and then to the next hop and back, etc. It will go straight through and that's it. Then the server will send the update.
You can get hints with tracert but it will not give you accurate results for everything.
Right, it shows each hop and back. The idea is that all of these delays, aside from maybe the last one (SE's server) are outside of SE's control. The point I'm trying to show you is that the distance (and path) that your data travels between you and SE is the big culprit. Tracert was to demonstrate that if you look at the difference in ping times between hops, you'll see the the delay is between nodes transmitting your data to the DC. If I look at mine, my pings are about 20ms to get from my area to someplace in Atlanta. And then 60ms to get from ATL to CA. SE doesn't control those servers. So my ping of 100ms is mostly due to one leg between ATL and CA and has nothing to do with SE at all.