The Bridgeward, which checks your way to the game servers

What the Bridgeward does#

The bridgeward kept the bridge into the town, and saw that the way stayed open. The Bridgeward checks the way to the game servers is fit for fast online games: its delay, how steady it is, and the packets lost.

It holds the Aletaster's office on a gamer's PC, with the Weigher behind it, which checks your line's speed and outages. On an everyday PC, the Weigher holds it.

The Bridgeward comes with the Household license. It uses no AI, and a round sends a few hundred bytes.

The game server regions#

Many online games run their servers in Amazon's cloud. The Bridgeward measures the way to its regions: 18 to choose from, from Virginia to Cape Town.

At first it watches the two nearest the time zone Windows is set to: Eastern Time watches Virginia and Ohio, London watches London and Ireland. Change them in Settings. Only when it can't place your time zone does its tour ask you.

A round#

Every 10 minutes, and when you press Check now:

• 8 connections to each region, a moment apart. Each is timed, and closed at once, with nothing sent.
• The delay is their middle time; jitter how much one differs from the next; lost the share that didn't get through within 2 seconds.

Each is graded for fast online games, and a region takes its worst grade:

Your router, too#

The Bridgeward pings your router 10 times a round. A router slower than 10 ms, unsteady, or losing pings means your home network adds to every game's delay. On Wi-Fi, the page says a cable, or the PC nearer the router, would steady it.

Each round notes the connection: Wi-Fi with its name and signal, Ethernet, or mobile broadband.

Its page#

The Bridgeward's page is at http://bridgeward.localhost:21414/, and Open on its card in Castellan goes there. It shows each region's grade, its delay, jitter and loss over the last day, your home network (the router and the connection), and the rough patches. Rounds are kept for three days.

Its settings#

What it can't do#

• A game's own servers may be elsewhere: its own data centres, or another cloud. The regions measure the way to where many games run, not to one game's match.
• Games mostly use UDP, and the Bridgeward times TCP connections. The round trip is the same, but a network that treats UDP differently isn't seen.
• A router that doesn't answer pings reads as "didn't answer". Some are set that way.