Frequently Asked Questions

Does this work for everyone?

In most cases, the SmoothPing service will lower your latency/ping considerably, usually by as much as 50-70%. For example, if you normally have a Ping around 350ms, you might expect to see something around 160-180ms using the SmoothPing service. For US users, you might be able to lower your ping well under 100ms, even as low as 50ms!

Unfortunately, there are times when SmoothPing will not lower your ping, especially if your connection is very poor and your connection to the SmoothPing is just too laggy to begin with.

Of course, the easiest way to test this it to sign up and try our service. In less than 5 minutes you will be in-game and experiencing your better connection.

How is this possible, it looks too good to be true? What's the catch?

There is no catch, really! Your ping is lowered through a process called "SSH Tunneling". You can try searching on Google for "SSH Tunnel" or visit this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol.

Basically, the SmoothPing service takes advantage of the higher priority that encrypted traffic is given on the Internet. Simply put, we are able to redirect your connection from the slow, every day "pipes" that are being used constantly by millions of users, to the much faster, infrequently used, high speed Secure routing on the internet.

Using SmoothPing is like changing your connection using the carpool lane and everyone else has to use the normal freeway, there's just not nearly as much traffic and it flows much smoother!

I have payed, but not gotten time added.

If you are using SmoothPING Elite, please try restarting it. If you are still having issues, please email admin@smoothping.com and we will get it fixed asap.

What are the programs I have to download, are they safe?

Here at SmoothPing, we like playing WoW, not configuring software! This is why we have created SmoothPING Elite. SmoothPING Elite is 100% safe to use, and has no viruses, keyloggers, adware or spyware. We never see your World of Warcraft password ever!

We understand that you may be skeptical of downloading our software, so we also give you the option to use two freeware programs that we did not make, Putty and Freecap.

SmoothPing is not the author of these programs and they are easily downloadable from their respective sites if you prefer this.

Alternatively, we have created an all-in-one package that has everything you need. You can download the latest SmoothPing software package here:

Click Here to Download SmoothPing.zip (837KB)

The latest listing of our servers can also be found here:

Click Here to Download the latest Smooth Ping Server listing

Can Mac users make use of the Smooth Ping service?

Yes, you can find setup instructions when you visit http://www.smoothping.com/mac

Which SmoothPing server should I choose?

The best SmoothPing server for you is dependent on where your actual WoW Server is physically located.

For US Players

In the US, Blizzard currently has 4 Datacenters, located in Los Angles, Dallas, Boston and Seattle.

Just because your WoW Server is set to a certain time does not mean it is located in that time zone's Datacenter. For example, you might be playing on an EST server that is physically located in Seattle.

USA WoW Datacenter Locations

Once you have identified in which Datacenter your WoW server is located, you should first try to pick a SmoothPing server that is as physically close as possible and give that a try. You can also try using our PING TEST service on our home page. This will Ping every server and give you average latency times from your location to the SmoothPing servers. Obviously the lower the Ping time the better, although that may not always be the case.

For International players, your best option might be where your traffic first enters the USA. For example, if you are from Australia and play on a WoW Server located in Boston, you might find you have better in-game latency connecting to a SmoothPing Los Angeles server, rather than our Boston servers.

Feel free to try any and all servers and find out which works best for you!

For EU Players

For EU users, the Blizzard servers are located in Frankfurt, Paris and Stockholm.

EU WoW Datacenter Locations

All of these servers are relatively close to each other and we have found our Netherlands server to give the overall best latency times.

What is the cost for using the SmoothPing service?

The SmoothPing service is free to try. You just need to sign up for an account, validate your email address, follow our instructions and start playing WoW! This is a trial account, and allows you to see the improvements you get when you use SmoothPing. You will be disconnected from WoW every 20 minutes with a trial account. A full SmoothPing account costs $5.99 USD per month, or 15.99 for 3 months.

Can I log into the same account from two different locations?

The SmoothPing service allows only one connection per user at a time. Our servers will automatically check and disallow logging into 2 different servers simultaneously.

Of course, feel free to make a 2nd account if you have multiple WoW clients that you use.

Will I get banned for using this? Is this safe?

The SmoothPing service is nothing more than a proxy server, essentially just making your connection from your computer to the Blizzard servers as fast as possible. Nothing in game is modified and there is no "cheating" involved. There are 10000's of people worldwide playing WoW via SSH Tunneling and the number of players doing this is growing every day.