Still under construction

Congestion and packetloss can occur in carious places between your Computer and the Game server (or any server on the internet):

Your local network, eg poor wifi signal
Your router, eg filling the available bandwidth with other traffic such as a Dropbox upload of your photos whilst playing a game
Your connection to the exchange, eg too many people on the fibres from your FTTC cabinet to the exchange
Your local exchange, eg the wholesale carrier has too many customers sharing the same back-hail links from the exchange into their network.
The back-haul provider in to the ISP, eg the links from BT to the ISP
The ISP routers, eg too much load on individual core routers at the ISP
The links from the ISP to the wider internet
The links from the wider internet to the Game server
The game server itself

Monitoring Exchanges and Back haul nodes

We have daily reports taken from all our individual DSL connections which will say if we are seeing a common problem that is affecting an individual exchange or a back-haul network node (eg a BRAS). This is published at: https://control.aa.net.uk/congestion.cgi