What is the meaning of the Connection Quality icons?
We have added Connection Quality Indicators for the multiplayer service. They are shown at the bottom of the Invitation Window.
They look like this:
From left to right, here’s what the icons mean:
- The bars show the network latency (also known as “ping time” or “round-trip time”), which means the amount of time needed for information to travel from your device to the SparkChess multiplayer servers and back. 4 green bars indicate a fast and stable network connection, while 1 red bar shows a slow and potentially unstable one. The number of bars you get depend on your physical location (users in North America are more likely to get 4 bars) and connection type. A laptop Ethernet connection will always be faster and more stable than a slow 2G cellular one.
- The Socket icon indicates whether your connection is through a web socket or by HTTP fallback. A green socket connection indicator means there’s a dedicated communication channel open between your device and the SparkChess multiplayer server. They are very fast but if the connection breaks due to your internet connection, you may get quickly disconnected from the server. HTTP fallback is much slower; it may not be affected by intermittent issues but this also means it may not detect immediately when your network is down. 93% of the connections to SparkChess are made via socket connections. HTTP fallback is used only if, due to peculiarities of your network, a socket connection cannot be established. As of SparkChess 11, all connections should be via sockets. We removed the HTTP fallback as it could cause unexpected issues with slow clients.
- The Lock icon indicates an encrypted connection. If you play SparkChess online through a secure HTTPS connection, the connection to the multiplayer server is required to be SSL-encrypted as well. As of SparkChess 11, encryption is always enabled.