The Meaning of the Lag Bar, by Markemp the Wanderer

First some definitions about the lag bar. The left_most number is latency. Lower is good. On a dial_up modem you'll see numbers around 250-300 (that's in Milliseconds). Or .3 seconds, which means any action you take will be deferred that length of time. On my DSL modem, it's around 160. On my old cable modem it was around 80, which is about as good as you can get it. If you are a caster, latency is extremely important. If you are trying to time a spell that takes 5 seconds to cast (and a tick lasts 6 seconds), then with a modem, standing up, casting, sitting down (to med again) won't work. However, the additional 200 ms you save with a DSL/cable modem means this works a lot better. For you melee types, just nod your head and grunt.

The green (usually) bar in the middle is packet loss. The number is usually 0, but sometimes it gets really bad. If it's consistently over 5pct, I call raids off. It can really affect the updates that clerics rely on; if you don't see your warriors hps dropping radically during a fight, you may not get that heal in on time. Sounds like you are seeing a lot of this.

The right_most number is through_put. High is good, to a limited degree. Running around Freeport it'll be between 150-500. Hunting can boost it up to 1500-2000. A Plane raid can get it up to 4000. PoF is particularly brutal. This is also where the datarate.txt file comes into play; if you have a big fat pipe, you can up the value in that file to 9.0 (default is 5.0, which is good for 28.8 modem). Means the server can send more data to your computer cause your network can handle it. If the server puts too much info on your network, packets will drop and you'll see packet loss in the middle number.

Markemp the Wanderer