latency spikes

[barney-fife]

Hey what causes latency spikes in a game where everyones latency spikes at the same time. Someone told me that when a person starts hacking that can do it but i have never heard of that. any ideas?

[ShutUpHoe]

sounds like a server problem to me

[TriTownct3]

idk on my clans server when we are doing matinence on it, it sometimes lag spikes. but like only when we are editing a major file, like the admin file.

[fallen1]

There are a few things I know of that can cause a whole server to lag at once, and I'm guessing at least a few more I don't know about. Any kind of maintanance will cause the server to lag. So will an admin remotely pulling a list of installed maps from the server (ahem, Freak). I've seen some people who had poorly written hacks that caused others to lag when the hacker was in their field of view. A server-side network bottle neck, such as a switch going down and more servers at a location having to share bandwidth while it's being fixed will do it too. Same for a major connection (like a T1, T3, or switching station) going down, since all the network traffic that was going through it has to find a new route at the same time. I've also seen servers lagged by running too many plug-ins at once or plug-ins that were conflicting with each other for some reason.

Those are just a few peossibilities off the top of my head.