Post by Makzimia on May 11, 2004 15:56:16 GMT
Greetings all,
As always, I am on top of the BIG picture of Fredian, and am about to make the server even more capable.
Next Monday at the latest I have a Intel Pro/1000 MT NIC ( Network Interface Card) coming, which has advanced features over your common garden variety cards most of you are undoubtably running, including a 64kb memory cache on board for handling collisions, packets etc.
What this will do is further reduce CPU overhead.
With the change in numbers on the server I am sure some players are suffering lag, let me first of all say, that is expected, some of you have modem connections and or substandard access in ways you probably don't realise. With more players in one area, more things coming in and out of the server from players with 400ms or worse pings the server is handling all this on a single thread of processing, NWN server is not a true multi-thread application, so, when things are heavy it will bog down.
Having said this, with 52 players on I have not seen the P4 2.8GHZ work more than around 90-95% CPU load and the uplink is pushing about 125kb up it's 268kb pipe meaning it has plenty of overhead there to reach the 64 players even now. Running the server in the 2GB of fast CAS 2.5 RAM with NO windows swap file has already reduced overheard by around 10-15% on most occasions, I am always keeping an eye on all of that.
In the future IF needed, the second server may be brought into a server portal setup, this of course also however means not all players will be on the one server and number of access would be cut down to 40 on each, the supposed ideal level to ever reach for a NWN server on a 2 GHZ which I exceed, along with the fact I use quality components ie: True Intel MB etc.
Those of you currently experiencing any lag need to do a number of things to first of all eliminate potential problems on your own end. Why do I say this? because a cross section of players have various experiences ranging from complaints of extreme lag to not noticing any, last one being Mala logged on last night on a laptop from Florida running around normal with 50 players on almost... so.
I will as always do the best I can to accomodate all players as I have always done, but at the end of the day, you need to check things also, ISP ping rates to your outside, not just IoF, do you have a network card on your motherboard or as a seperate card? if not, get one, the seperate card, even a normal $15- $20 one does a better job than the onboard one which chews more CPU cycles... what video settings have you got on? how many players are with you? are they on a modem? what sound settings have you got on? if you do a ~ fps on the console command of NWN what rate have you got?? these are all questions that you need to answer for each of you individually.
When all that is said and done, still there are other factors, are you using direct connect to the server? or gamespy? if you are on gamespy, change to direct connect.
speedtest.dslextreme.com/ try this site, requires java, see what your up and down connection speed is, and watch how long it takes to do it.
Hope this all helps... I will look after you all, and, if you want to also help me, this hardware all costs a lot of money over time, I have spent again around another $400 in the last month on upgrades to better improve how your play goes, donations are nice
and thanks to those in the past that have donated, even in some cases at personal expense to help this process.
Thanks,
Makz.
As always, I am on top of the BIG picture of Fredian, and am about to make the server even more capable.
Next Monday at the latest I have a Intel Pro/1000 MT NIC ( Network Interface Card) coming, which has advanced features over your common garden variety cards most of you are undoubtably running, including a 64kb memory cache on board for handling collisions, packets etc.
What this will do is further reduce CPU overhead.
With the change in numbers on the server I am sure some players are suffering lag, let me first of all say, that is expected, some of you have modem connections and or substandard access in ways you probably don't realise. With more players in one area, more things coming in and out of the server from players with 400ms or worse pings the server is handling all this on a single thread of processing, NWN server is not a true multi-thread application, so, when things are heavy it will bog down.
Having said this, with 52 players on I have not seen the P4 2.8GHZ work more than around 90-95% CPU load and the uplink is pushing about 125kb up it's 268kb pipe meaning it has plenty of overhead there to reach the 64 players even now. Running the server in the 2GB of fast CAS 2.5 RAM with NO windows swap file has already reduced overheard by around 10-15% on most occasions, I am always keeping an eye on all of that.
In the future IF needed, the second server may be brought into a server portal setup, this of course also however means not all players will be on the one server and number of access would be cut down to 40 on each, the supposed ideal level to ever reach for a NWN server on a 2 GHZ which I exceed, along with the fact I use quality components ie: True Intel MB etc.
Those of you currently experiencing any lag need to do a number of things to first of all eliminate potential problems on your own end. Why do I say this? because a cross section of players have various experiences ranging from complaints of extreme lag to not noticing any, last one being Mala logged on last night on a laptop from Florida running around normal with 50 players on almost... so.
I will as always do the best I can to accomodate all players as I have always done, but at the end of the day, you need to check things also, ISP ping rates to your outside, not just IoF, do you have a network card on your motherboard or as a seperate card? if not, get one, the seperate card, even a normal $15- $20 one does a better job than the onboard one which chews more CPU cycles... what video settings have you got on? how many players are with you? are they on a modem? what sound settings have you got on? if you do a ~ fps on the console command of NWN what rate have you got?? these are all questions that you need to answer for each of you individually.
When all that is said and done, still there are other factors, are you using direct connect to the server? or gamespy? if you are on gamespy, change to direct connect.
speedtest.dslextreme.com/ try this site, requires java, see what your up and down connection speed is, and watch how long it takes to do it.
Hope this all helps... I will look after you all, and, if you want to also help me, this hardware all costs a lot of money over time, I have spent again around another $400 in the last month on upgrades to better improve how your play goes, donations are nice
and thanks to those in the past that have donated, even in some cases at personal expense to help this process.Thanks,
Makz.
