Server farms coming around the world.

I think the most exciting thing I noticed in the new report was the decision to add servers in different locations. 

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-update-5-million-new-members

Performance

We are dedicated to improving the performance of our chess interfaces, our network connections, and every product and feature on Chess.com. We will be focusing on performance in 2022 and we’re excited for what we'll be able to achieve on your behalf.

A few key areas we are focused on:

• Streamlining chessboard and user interface
• Geo-distributing gameplay (lower ping, faster connections)
• Optimizing page and image sizes
• Faster analysis and deep engine lines

I had found an article a couple months ago where one of the tech staff made some comments around that being in the plans. Cool to see additional information along those lines.

Why make such a large investment? I thought lag was always the user's fault and had nothing to do with chess.com servers.

Lag is a function of multiple variables, one of which is the client setup. Another is distance (physics) and the need to traverse a lot of other network equipment, where any part of that path can introduce lag or connection issues.

Having more geographically dispersed server processes should remove some of that variability for players and improve connectivity for a lot of members, especially those not in North America. It won't solve all lag but should be an improvement for a lot of members.

This has got to be in the top 3 of posts that feel like the person is not responding to me, but is writing for some other audience.

I hope the technically illiterate people, or your boss, or whoever you had in mind while writing this approves.

It was in reply to the sentiment on your second sentence. I'm not posting for approval, nor do I have a boss to impress; while the moderation lead may feel particular posts in regards to moderator activities might be recognized as appropriate, that has zero bearing on the content of my posts.

Regarding anyone being technically illiterate, or literate for that matter, that doesn't discount anything I said. A lot of issues are client side and a lot are between the client and the site. The information in the OP is for doing something about the latter.

My sentiment, as you put it, is this Martin is at odds with the version of Martin I've seen many times in the past commenting in topics where a person is complaining about the slowness of chess.com servers. They often say that they test their connection to other websites, and for that reason are confident that it is a problem with chess.com. I've only ever seen you respond to these people by saying it's a problem on their end. And yet here you acknowledge that "lag is a function of multiple variables." How open minded of you, lol.

My default reply to a connection issue will often be the disconnect help article. But if the poster has more details about steps they have taken or mention connections to other sites not having issues, I'll go in more depth.

The versions of the posts you've seen may be the former, but a lot have been the latter.  Mostly a quick link to the article is enough 🙂

Hmm, that's true. Many are resolved quickly with a FAQ-type link. My selective memory discards those as too mundane.

Well anyway, we agree that it's nice that chess.com is investing. There are warts here and there, but it's still the best chess website.

I wont play bullet here until chess.com make a server in Austra/Asia region or lag compensation like lichess. + 200 milliseconds disadvantage is noticable in bullet. ( We have +300ms ping to chess.com server and people in USA probably have +100 ms ping).

I'm in US. Just tested mine. I have 29ms.

Hey @Martin_Stahl, check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90vkulvZCCg

Here in the Asia region for me, if I just ping the site from cmd it's about 33ms, but for live chess it always hovers around ~100ms. 

Lichess usually is little better, maybe because of the physical proximity to the servers, but Hikaru also once admitted to Lichess felling a little faster and he's in NA, so dunno... 

Lag or not, I'm terrible at chess anyways so doesn't matter.

Did you move?