I live in Asia but I keep getting servers that are in other region

When I’m the first one to join a private server or my own game, most of the time I’ll get about 200-400ms which is weird because when I join any Roblox game that has many players (many servers created), most of the time I’ll get about 60-130ms.

  • Happens in every game
  • I live in Thailand
  • I disabled all Chrome extensions
  • I don’t have any VPN
  • My internet is stable and not slow because my ping is normal in other games

I join my own place (the default place that every account has) 10 times to test how consistent the problem is, and I got about 250ms for all 10 times. (Test at 3:30 PM 4/29/2022 GMT+7)

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and I join Anime Fighters Simulator 10 times to compare with my own place, and I got about 60-150ms for all 10 times. (Test at 3:30 PM 4/29/2022 GMT+7)

image

However, I got an Asia server more frequently when it was late at night so it might be something about
the number of active players in my region.

Thanks

20 Likes

This is very rare, however if your ISP is getting a data from a location, like outside Asia, you might get that server location, stating facts, Asia is the largest continent, there is no way that there are 0 servers in it, the thing is your getting different location

I have tried to reproduce the bug, it does not seem to work, even though I am not a Roblox staff ,I wanted to try this in-person
Click this link: http://ip-api.com/json/
And check if your getting "country":"Your country"
If this is showing the correct country, its not an issue with your device, its probably the game, or the server location display

Also note that 100-200 ping is normal, even if the server location is in your country, sometimes you would get ping like 50-100, 150 is normal too, but if your getting 150+ the server location is probably a bit far for your causing a bit of ping

7 Likes

Thanks for replying, It’s showing the correct country in http://ip-api.com/json/

However, when I use a script that detects the region of the server using the same website that you gave me, I find that it’s always a server that is located in the USA when I got a high ping (200-300ms), and it always an Asia server (Japan, Hongkong, Singapore) when I got lower ping (60-130). So I conclude that the reason why I got a high ping is that I got USA Server.

Playing with 200-300ms is painful especially when I’m playing a fast-paced PVP game. Everything is delayed by 0.24 seconds if the ping is 240ms, and it’s so frustrating when I knew that I could’ve got a better ping if it sends me to an Asia server.

here’s the script I use to find the server region if you want to look at it

function GetServerRegion()
local http = game:GetService(“HttpService”)

local result

local g,b = pcall(function()
result = http:JSONDecode(http:GetAsync(“https://api4.my-ip.io/ip.json”))
end)

local ip = result.ip

if g and ip then
local location
local good,bad = pcall(function()
location = http:JSONDecode(http:GetAsync(“http://ip-api.com/json/”…ip))
end)
if good and location.region and location.regionName then
return location.region , location.regionName
else
warn("fatal error fetching server geo location. error: "…bad)
return nil, nil
end
else
warn("fatal error fetching server ip. error: "…b)
return nil, nil
end
end

2 Likes

Ping might can also be caused when your internet is slow, also if you checking the server location of a server using its IP address, there is a higher chance you would get a wrong country than the correct country

I recommend you to try this method below to get server location, and see if the location matches your country

Also if it always comes exact in studio, because it uses your Device location than server location, so test it in-game

I tried your method of getting server location and it gives the same result as mine, and there is the fact that I only get a high ping when it said that the server is located in the USA and I only get a low ping when it’s an Asia server so I don’t think my internet is slow plus I got a good ping in other games (not Roblox games).

image
Result from my script

image
Result from your script

my ping when it said the server is in Asia (I rejoined many times to find an Asia server)

my ping when it said the server is in the USA

1 Like

Sorry, only a roblox admin can tell why the location is not your country, also try to see if your internet server is in USA internet speed test - Google Search
Show me your this stats
image

Alright, so I found why your getting random location on basis of data center
So its stated that whoever joins the server first, their location is the server location, but upto what level?

See basically if you live in Antartica, and you play a game, your location won’t be Antartica, it takes the nearby data center located in any nearby country

If there is no data center found it takes longer time to find a server, and therefore after some time you will get the server, but the thing is how are you getting server after some time but not earlier

Look data servers won’t be free all the time, like they rarely be free, when Roblox finds a nearby data center for you, however there is no guarantee, that data center near you is chosen

If no server is found near you, it changes the radius of search to a larger area

Server location is the physical location of the data center where your website is hosted. The data centers can be anywhere in the world. While choosing a web hosting provider, you need to consider the destination of your target audience

Basically roblox searches near you first, later a bit far, until a server is found, so if its more than a bit of time, Roblox is located at US, so roblox might choose the US server

See basically if your at one side of the earth it would be 2 pm, on other side approx 2 am, anyone rarely plays at 2 am, so most of the servers there are free, and most of the servers near your region are occupied, because everyone is awake, so there are less servers available at your side, if you ever noticed this, I tried to play a game which have server location display at night time, I noticed the server location is in my country, even though its 12 am, anyone barely even plays at that time, so it means server location is choosen on basis:

  • Network traffic
  • Timezones
  • Availablity

So when its morning/evening/afternoon or the time where most people play, its also true that when you play at midnight, there is a higher chance, the server location is your country, because all of the servers in your country might be free, so it might be choosen


This is an image representing my geographical location

I live in India, and the circles represent a range, since US,Canada is the opposite side of my country, out of 10, I get USA as the location 8 times, and 2 times as my country, or countries near me

7 Likes

I see, so in this case, there’s nothing I can do to solve this problem right? I think Roblox should add an option that you can select the preferred server region so I could do something else while waiting for an available server and don’t have to rejoin over and over.

15 Likes

You should only mark solution if your problem is solved and you don’t need further help.

4 Likes

Following up on this, are you still experiencing the issue, sir?

5 Likes

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I’m still experiencing the issue.

2 Likes

I seems to have been able to find out the cause of the issue, asian players (except indian) have players creating servers in US-West (mainly portland server) during peak hours starting in the morning all the way to midnight (tried by using a VPN), I do understand you are trying to balance the load, however from my experience using US-West server in asia gives a high ping and a overall worse experience than slightly overloaded servers.

3 Likes

I created server using Hong Kong IP at around 8am UTC and 4pm Local Time on my starting place, also joined adopt me 10 times, here is the result

Results

– Server Created from my starting place–

  1. 128.116.53.99 – Portland, OR, USA
  2. 128.116.56.164 – Portland, OR, USA
  3. 128.116.55.36 – Portland, OR, USA
  4. 128.116.56.203 – Portland, OR, USA
  5. 128.116.55.99 – Portland, OR, USA
  6. 128.116.54.150 – Portland, OR, USA
  7. 128.116.57.82 – Portland, OR, USA
  8. 128.116.56.208 – Portland, OR, USA
  9. 128.116.54.228 – Portland, OR, USA
  10. 128.116.54.220 – Portland, OR, USA
  11. 128.116.82.111 – Tokyo, Japan
  12. 128.116.55.94 – Portland, OR, USA
  13. 128.116.53.145 – Portland, OR, USA
  14. 128.116.53.153 – Portland, OR, USA
  15. 128.116.53.200 – Portland, OR, USA

– Joining Adopt Me –

  1. 128.116.14.79 – Hong Kong
  2. 128.116.14.10 – Hong Kong
  3. 128.116.83.194 – Tokyo, Japan
  4. 128.116.14.93 – Hong Kong
  5. 128.116.82.139 – Tokyo, Japan
  6. 128.116.14.49 – Hong Kong
  7. 128.116.14.13 – Hong Kong
  8. 128.116.14.10 – Hong Kong
  9. 128.116.14.10 – Hong Kong
  10. 128.116.14.79 – Hong Kong
4 Likes

this has been happening for the longest time i can remember.
Yes it is still an issue and would be appreciated if this is fixed relatively soon
i do not want my players to experience high ping from issues that are not their own fault

6 Likes

Can we have an answer to these questions, sir? These are very helpful for us:

  1. Those join, is join via “green play button” or “join reserved game”?
  2. If it’s joining reserved game, when/who create that reserved server?

Looking globally, the average ping time for Thailand players is around ~100

It’s expected if we assume at night there are more available Servers running in Asia for that specific place but less during daytime - matchmaking algorithm by default will match player to other region’s available Servers in most normal cases (Sometime it’s case by case countries policy itself, but what described here is general case)

Let us know about those questions!

3 Likes

But isn’t it common, how can it be a bug, I mean

Even I get like that
Those join, via green button?
Yes join green button
If its a reserved server
No its not a reserved server

I never got server location of my country, is it a bug or?

3 Likes

We don’t assume it’s a bug, but an intended behavior because of how the algorithm works by default!
As explained here in this case:

However, we just want to dig in a bit and ask some questions to make sure.

3 Likes

In my opinion, the only way to fix this issue is to increase the capacity of asian (especially hong kong) server’s capacity, however this is very expensive. hopefully the re-release of Australian servers as promised in RDC 2021 can help mitigate the issue.

If you know what you are doing you may also enable the fast flag “EarlyExitIfHang_DataCenterFilter” to block the portland servers as a temporary fix. – incorrect

5 Likes

found a fix yet? this just started recently happening to me. Whenever I use this account, I always get put in US servers. But when I use a different account, I get always put in Singapore servers.

12 Likes

image
(This book tells the player what the server’s region is)

I’m in the United States. I joined my game as the only player. The server’s region was in Japan. Yesterday, it was in Germany. ROBLOX’s matchmaking has been awful as of recently.

11 Likes