What's going on?

[Auggie]

Okay, here's me going on about ping again, but hear me out.

Lately, I've been having slight ping spikes on my SWBF2 SWBFSpy server that we use to scrimmage on, and in an attempt to ensure that's it's just my ISP and not that particular NFO server, I set up a test server with a different VDS. I'm quite confident that it's just my ISP, so ignore the ping spikes.

Anyway, the crazy part is that my ping on the test server is about 10-15ms lower than the other server! The even crazier part is that both VDSs are from NFO, are located in Chicago, have the same specs (2 cores, 2 GB), and are both using Anyder's 40tps server manager. I tried doing a TraceRT to both servers and got identical pings! Nothing, that I know of, is different about these VDSs or the game server settings, yet the in-game pings are drastically different!

Even when I got my first VDS from NFO back in the summer, I've always gotten pings ranging from 93-100ms. On the test server, I get 79-88ms!

Also, it takes 1 second to join my normal server while it takes 0 seconds to join my lower-ping test server.

Please help. I'd like to know what could be causing my test server to have 10-15ms lower ping (which is a lot!) when the servers are exactly the same, as far as I know.

The only difference is the OS. My normal server is running Windows 2008 R2 while my lower-ping test server is running Windows 2012 R2. But I've ran Windows 2012 R2 on other VDSs and the ping remains normal (93-100ms).

EDIT: I don't know if this makes a difference, but the lower-ping server was originally set up on GameRanger where in-game pings are about 10-15ms lower than SWBFSpy. I'm getting about the same ping on the test server that I usually get on a Chicago GameRanger server. I don't know how that would affect the server's ping calculation. Just a thought.

[Anyder]

SWBFSpy doesnt affect the host. All swbfspy does is have a common server lobby, so pings inside the server are none of the MS's business....