When I press the tab button on a Minecraft server, the green bars are really low. They used to be full all the time but aren't now.
Why is that? What have I done wrong?
3 Answers
The green bars represent how good your connection to the server is.
They are likely lower than they used to be because your connection to the server has gotten worse. If you haven't changed your connection then it's likely just a temporary fluctuation; you may see them go back up to full if you connect at a different time.
2The green bars show whether you have a good or bad connection to the server (ie. a good or bad ping).
It can be effected by your internet connection (I get this when I'm using the coffee shop wifi, for example), or a bad connection somewhere between you and the server. When your computer connects to a web page or a server or anything online, it hops through a bunch of connection points along the way. So, if there's a problem between you and them somewhere in the middle, that could do it too.
There's a way to check where the connection is slow, if you open a command prompt in Windows and type "tracert " and then your server name or ip (so, type: "tracert 192.186.2.3" for example, if that was the ip of your server), it'll show how long it takes to connect to each hop along the way. If you're really having problems, you could probably email a screen shot of that to your ISP and they might be able to help you troubleshoot the connection issue.
1It doesn't really matter about what kind of internet you have though, and it usually also depends on the current processes. For example, I'm uploading some files, and I guess you can then expect the bars to drop.
