Will Covid connection issues ever be fixed?

Will Covid connection issues ever be fixed?

Before the pandemic I didn't play much but nonetheless never had connection problems. In particular in the last month, however, things started taking a bad turn. I now have many games were move lag is huge (like 8 sec) or I simply disconnect. The problem is certainly not that of my connection since I constantly have a ping lower than 20 (which should be more than enough to play chess) on speedtest.net and I also have no problem playing Puzzle Battles (which I know are hosted in different servers).  This week I tried playing on a site with European servers and everything went smoothly. I really like chess.com but it really makes me wonder whether I should switch site and in particular stop paying for the diamond membership when I get a sub optimal service.

What do you think? Will these issues ever get fixed or should I move to another site?

I think you will always have less lag going to a nearby server.

It's not the server itself. It's the many connections along the way.

And the surge in worldwide internet usage during the pandemic.

I have no serious lag issues here. I think chess.com is making major investments in servers and support to keep up with usage. There are many things beyond their control.

Obviously the problem is due to the surge in usage of the platform, however if other sites can deal with it why can't Chess.com? The problem is less prevalent in the US since they have servers there and not in Europe, but I see many other Europeans with connection problems when I play, while I rarely see people from countries like El Salvador disconnnecting. Are you telling me that it's normal for people in Germany to have more problems than people in Guatemala? During this period chess.com is certainly making good profits, but if they want to continue making them they need to invest in servers fast or they will lose the players.

It completely depends on the links the traffic flows through and isn't just the traffic on the platform but internet-wide. If your path takes your traffic through a link that introduces more lag or causes more drops than another member in a different part of the world, you will have more problems.

Your comment in your first post about Puzzle Battle is not just about different servers but also different processes. You can still get disconnected from a Battle or have lag, but the site preloads the puzzles in batches and that can mitigate the perception of lag/disconnects enough that it isn't noticable most of the time.

Then how is it possible that I can play online videogames on US servers, that are obviously more connection dependant, without major problems, but I can't play chess where the whole process is about sending a single move to a server? If my problem was the internet wide traffic in my area wouldn't I have problems there too?

And again and again getting timed out for connection issues. I got full bars, everything else works fine.. chess.com servers somewhere in dagistan mountains?

Close, California

Video games are not as real-time dependent. A little lag and a short disconnect from the server and you can still play on your local device and as soon as that resolves, things will catch back up. If you are playing a multiplayer game, the other people will see signs of your issues; freezes, jerky movement, apparent teleportation or fast movement, all depending how it is handed by the code on the server and client. It's a completely different paradigm and not all US servers are in the same location and your connection may have to travel over more hops and longer distances for here than whatever other game you are playing.

I read that the newest release of the Kaspersky software completely irradicates Covid.

Lol, if I had an 8 seconds lag I can tell you I would notice on a multiplayer. Even if you have more than 200ms of lag you can tell by the shots registering late. I'm quite  expert in gaming so stop it with your BS excuses. It's just that your servers are overloaded and you need to increase their number. Period.

Plus, video games are earning big dollars. Most people are spending hundreds of dollars per year on the games. Video game revenues are higher than Hollywood's revenues.

I agree with you that chess.com should charge everyone $60 to start and then $10 per month so they could afford to set up servers around the world, the way video games do now.

Chess.com does not earn that kind of money now.  They don't have a server network set up around the world.

I am sure chess.com appreciates your support but most people do not pay. 

First, not my servers, I'm a volunteer moderator. I'm answering because I have a server and networking background and know a small bit about how the site works on the live server front.

Second, the site has been adding a lot of hardware (and/or upgrading) over the past couple of months has been adding manpower to assist with the increased load.

One thing is that the live server process, the brains behind handling all the games an move communication is in a single location and if it happens the there is a problem between you and that server, anywhere from your client all the way down to the server itself, you can experience lag or small disconnects. Only a very small part of that path is under the control of the site.

Two months ago there were around 3 million live games a day and now the site is ever 5 million. I know I have had minimal lag issue, though I recently had a disconnect that didn't resolve until I had lost a game on time. However, the vast majority of the time, I've had no issue. But I'm in the US and my traffic only shares the last hop or two that your does.

I believe the site is working on a new process for how Live works but have no idea how far along that is it how quickly it will make it to production. That will likely improve things for members that have issues, but can't say it will fix all of them; because again, there are a lot of things the site has zero control over.

I understand and I'm happy chess.com is trying to work on it. What I was complaining about is that saying that you wouldn't notice disconnects in videogames is totally false. That's it. Thanks

I didn't say you wouldn't notice, it's just less noticeable since your local client can just keep rendering the scene based on the data it has and you can still move around. Anyway, it is a different architecture and asynchronous in nature; since the site only allows a set amount of lag, larger blips and disconnects can have big impacts, especially in blitz time controls or time trouble.

Pretty sure that's not going to happen. The site has a lot of employees, content creation costs, and other expenses and there's a very good chance something like that wouldn't come close to covering it.