Players are experiencing high ping or lag: how do I diagnose it?

Latency and lag have two distinct causes: network latency (ping) and server-side performance. They feel similar to players but have different solutions.

Network latency (high ping): this is the round-trip time between the player and the server. Our servers are in Germany (EU); players in the UK and Western Europe will have low ping (under 30ms), while players in North America or Asia will have higher ping that cannot be reduced regardless of plan. If ping complaints are only from specific geographic regions, this is a network distance issue, not a server problem.

Server-side lag (stuttering, rubber-banding): this is caused by the server not processing ticks fast enough. For Minecraft, check the TPS Monitor page; values below 20 indicate server-side lag. For GMod, run status in the Console to see current server performance.

Server-side lag is caused by: too many addons or plugins running expensive per-tick operations, too many entities spawned in the world, a world that has grown very large with many loaded chunks, or RAM/CPU usage close to the plan limit.

Diagnosis steps: check the Server Vitals page during a period when lag is reported. If CPU is at 100% or RAM is above 85%, the plan is undersized for the current load. If CPU and RAM are fine, the issue is a specific addon or plugin. Use the activity log to identify recent changes, then disable recently added items one at a time.