Direct answer

High ping measures network round-trip delay; high MSPT/low TPS indicates the server is slow to process game ticks. Players can experience either or both. Check them separately before changing server performance settings.

How to check it

  1. When a player reports rubber-banding, note whether it affects one player/region or nearly everyone.
  2. On Paper or a compatible platform with spark, check /spark health for server health and /spark ping for player connection latency.
  3. If TPS remains near normal and MSPT is low but one player has high ping, investigate their route/Wi-Fi, region and packet loss. If MSPT spikes for many players, profile server tick work with /spark profiler start and /spark profiler stop.
/spark health
/spark ping
/spark profiler start
/spark profiler stop

What to change

For a network problem, troubleshoot Wi-Fi, routing, ISP congestion, proxy location and packet loss. For server tick lag, identify slow plugins, entities, chunk generation or machine contention from the profile. Do not “fix” high ping by blindly lowering entity activation distances, or “fix” low TPS by changing DNS alone.

If only one network segment is affected, compare direct/proxy routes and packet loss before moving hosting providers.

Software and version notes

spark’s official command reference documents health, ping and profiling commands. On Velocity the spark command alias differs (/sparkv); the Paper TPS/MSPT diagnosis does not automatically describe proxy-only latency.

Verify the result

Repeat the same client/network test after changes. Verify player ping/packet loss for network fixes and MSPT, TPS and profile hotspots for tick fixes. Measure both when a proxy and server are involved.

References