What is with the HomeLan Federation servers?

[HuFlungDung]

I've tried playing on these servers and what always seems to happen, as soon as a new map starts, there is mega lag for 2 or 3 minutes for everybody on the server. Initially when I join the game in progress, there is no problem as far as I know, ie., everyone's ping stays normal. Am I causing this somehow, or do many other people witness the same thing?

Why do I ask?

I remember back in the Unreal 1 days, that somehow, by joining a game, I could actually cause the server to crash. One diligent server admin tracked me down via his logs. I reinstalled the game and everything was ok after that.

[DividedSky]

No, this happens when I've played there (hence I no longer play there). It also happens on the Avenade.com server. Very strange. Everyone has >1000 for a minute or two, then things come back to normal. I don't think it's just you or I, HFD. I can check the player list from the server browser while not in the game, and I can see everyone in there having gargantuan pings at the beginning of a map.

[DD]

HomeLAN suxors. Everyone of their servers have problems with lag and huge ping spikes. It inevitably happens so I stopped playing on them.

[Temporary Account]

Yeah, everyone I know has this problem with HLF. Sux0rz, as I get good pings to them when they're not fux0red.

[Kukuman]

I get good pings to HLF servers, but I try to avoid playing on them for reasons I won't go into here as I almost caused a flame war over it :o

[DividedSky]

LOL Kukuman ... you mean the "HomeLanFed are Communists" thread? Haha, that was a good one :)