Server Bandwidth Problem

(S.P.G) #1

Heres a strange one

I have set up a deicated ET pro server on my 3meg (NTL) cable connection at home. After finaly getting the thing to work (thanks to whoever wrote that server guide on jolt) All works well when 6 players are on but as soon as the 7th joins it all goes to hell with very very bad lag. I assume this is a upload bandwith problem and was wondering if there is anything i can do to improve it ?

The other thing the server config doesnt seem to work 100% i have put in a divert for downloads but it always uses the server.

(BondyBoy007) #2

sounds like its just reaching the limit available on your NTL connection, NTL upload speeds aren’t that great, there was a post somewhere on here that listed the bandwidth used per client etc. try searching

you could try lowering the server rate a little, but if you do that too much everyone on the server will suffer.

Best bet, buy a server from a proper game hosting provider

(Gimpsta) #3

Your ISP will most probably give you 256Kb upload bandwith. ET takes approx 35Kb per client (I may be a bit out here) so 6 clients will nearly max your connection out.
If you want to host more players then you will have to stump up cash for a server, as BondyBoy007 suggest.

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

Lower your sv_maxrate

with only 6-10 people, you should be able to go quite a bit lower than most public servers use. Play around with different values (I’d suggest 8-10k).

A traffic shaping/fair queing system (e.g. tc in linux) can also improve how your connection behaves near max load, but the effort required to set it up most likely isn’t worthwhile.

(S.P.G) #5

Ta Troops

Yeah i know we need to open the wallet and get a pukka server, This was just a effort to try and get one for free :slight_smile: and have some know how into setting one up and running one. So i Tried what has been suggested and 6 appears to be the magic number. Seeing that its a bandwidth problem would moving it onto linux help. (As purely for interest here what flavour of linux is good for ET ?) All in all its been a nice little learning exercise and we have free 3 on 3 server or little practice server.

(Gimpsta) #6

Moving to Linux will not change the amount of bandwidth required by each client. A Linux server may well be more ‘efficient’ than a windows server so better at handling CPU load but that won’t help with bandwidth.
AS you said, 3v3 is still good fun :o)

(SCDS_reyalP) #7

No, moving to linux would not help much, if at all. Distro shouldn’t matter much.

With linux (or anything else that supports traffic shaping and fair queuing) you can improve performance at high network load, but this will only be a big gain if there is non-game traffic that you can put at a lower priority. It will also work better if the traffic control is on a box between the server and the internet, rather than on the server itself (allowing you to actually shape both directions).

See http://www.lartc.org/

and in specific: http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.cookbook.ultimate-tc.html#AEN2210

ISPs know that they are benchmarked solely on how fast people can download. Besides available bandwidth, download speed is influenced heavily by packet loss, which seriously hampers TCP/IP performance. Large queues can help prevent packet loss, and speed up downloads. So ISPs configure large queues.

These large queues however damage interactivity. A keystroke must first travel the upstream queue, which may be seconds (!) long and go to your remote host. It is then displayed, which leads to a packet coming back, which must then traverse the downstream queue, located at your ISP, before it appears on your screen.

You may be able to get a plan from your ISP with more upload. Mine offers up to 600kbit up on DSL.