Original von Stevie_G
I'm having the same issue as others with high pings in the 1.4 server browser, with only a few servers in the 100-200 range, and most at 600 ms or higher. I've done some troubleshooting to narrow down the problem and have some interesting info to share.
Bottom line - the pings aren't just *showing* high in the server browser, they really *are* that high, but only while the server browser is refreshing! Strange but true - the server browser actually screws up my connection while it is refreshing servers, creating massive ping spikes and packet loss on my connection that can be seen in other applications, and on other computers behind my router.
Here's how I discovered this: I used pingplotter, a handy utility (
www.pingplotter.com) that can track pings to specified IP address and graph them over time. I set pingplotter up on 2 different computers - my gaming computer and an office computer (both are behind the same router and using the same internet connection) - and on each computer I set pingplotter to ping my clan's COD4 server every 1 second. Then I refreshed servers in COD4 on my game computer and looked at what it did to the pingplotter graph on each computer. While the COD4 server browser was refreshing, the ping to my clan server in pingplotter went from a steady 35 ms (and no packet loss) to over 600 ms (with packet loss over 50%). When the COD4 server browser was finished, the pings and packet loss went back to normal. And note that this same thing happened on both computers - the gaming computer running COD4 and the office computer in another room. And this behavior is 100% repeatable - while the COD4 server browser is running, pings and packet loss always spike on both computers.
So, the 1.4 server browser is doing something very strange that is somehow saturating my connection and causing massive packet loss and ping spikes while it runs, so every server shows up with a high ping. I don't know if the saturation is happening at my router (D-Link gaming router) or at the ISP (Comcast), but regardless IW really screwed this one up. I have never seen an application mess up my connection like this before. Even when I'm downloading huge files at 8 Mb/s my ping barely flinches and packet loss doesn't jump.
But here's the good part - my in-game pings seem to be fine, and even while I'm playing on a server, pingplotter shows that pings to that server and other servers remain fine. So the problem is isolated to the server browser; there is no ping problem during actual gameplay.
I invite others who are having the 1.4 ping problems to replicate these results. Send the message to IW that this is a real problem and needs to be fixed ASAP!