Our New Server... What do you think?

[Watchwolf]

It's been a little over a month now since we all pulled ourselves together as a community and did what some here and more elsewhere said we couldn't do.... buy a new high-end server. It's OUR server. Now I'd like to see what our general opinion of it.  I'm not hearing any complaints so in that way of looking at it I suppose no news is good news.

So here's your chance. Whatever you think, I wanna hear it. Was it worth it? Do you see a difference? Are you happy?

Praise, concerns, opinions, complaints, whatever... let's hear it.

[Sythe]

Well , sorry to rain down on anyones parade , so to say......

but for me it has gotten alot worse !

Ping has risen now to 120+  @-)  , no matter how many players are on .. and pvp's are pointless now for me as the gameplay is not the same ---- seeing the respawn screen and still hearing "Incoming Missle" messages and hearing hits to my ship and listening to it explode as Im looking at respawn screen , not good !

----------so i find myself trading and killing those WAY to EASY npc's  :-<

[DeathKnight]

i think its good but yes more improvements can be made !

[Fracture]

You know .. Ping is a relative thing..

I do not know what it is like to play this game with a ping lower then 185 ms.
I would love to get a chance to play the Void sub 100 ms.

Lag due to server load has been Significantly reduced.
Lag due to ping time is no fault of the server machine.

The new server is stable and quick Wolf.

“It’s a better most of the time”  

Frac

[[X]Thorn[X]]

Srry to say m8s but the new server made Void a lag box all we get in major pvp is lagg and b4 we didn't have any lag at all

Thorn!

[Fracture]

This question may be a bit mis-understood ... maybe by me.

The old server could NOT have been better for much longer.   No matter what.

If it were not for the new server box.. The Void would not be online.

I am thankful for the new server for different reasons then some others I guess.

The new server means much more than many think about.  

Thank you once again to those who made it possible.

Frac

[URAMI]

I haven't had much opportunity to play on the new server as college has started back for me and I'm taking 7 classes and working a job and supporting a family.  I'm very overwhelmed with RL atm but.........in regards to the server:

For the first 2 weeks it was terrible for me.....after contacting my ISP I found out it wasn't Void, it was my connection.  For example (no joke) I was getting 10% loss when I pinged www.yahoo.com ....... you can imagine my loss %% when I was in game lol  :)   It is fixed now and I have a great connection speed and NO loss!!  :D  

After that the server seemed to run great.

[Watchwolf]

Lag. The age old gamer's nemesis. What causes it? How can we cure it?

The EASY answer: Blame the Server. Sure. No one wants to jump up and say, "It's my fault." and take responsibility for their problem. Far easier to blame someone else. The problem with that is, the problem doesn't go away. Period.

It seems mystifying to some people, all this yadda about LAG and LOSS and FPS and so on. Most people who play games aren't computer or network experts. (No matter how much they would like you to think they are) Unless you do it for a living or your dad does and he's real patient and passes all his infinite knowledge, wisdom and experience down to you in weekly updates, I bet you're not.

Heck, I DO work on computers and networks for a living and I didn't know everything I needed to know to completely figure it out  But I have one of the most powerful diagnostic tools for PC maintenance and I take full advantage of it:

The Internet.

Amazing the things you can learn on the internet. And I did. I spent about an hour reading articles learning the what's why's and how's of Gaming Lag. Then I spent another reading forums getting the anecdotal evidence to support what the articles said. I learned enough to say I believe I completely understand the problem. And I am delighted to spend a few minutes sharing it. Especially since it's not all that complicated to begin with.

Be seated, boys and girls... class is in session:

The first and probably most important thing I learned is that it's not all that complicated.

Next is, It's usually not the server. Unless:
1 - The server is not dedicated, meaning the server is used for other things besides hosting the game. (The Void Server is 100% dedicated)
2 - The server is dedicated but it's connected to the 'net through the same port (connection) that is being used for other internet applications. (The Void Server's connection is dedicated)
3 - The server has low bandwidth or is not powerful enough to host a group.

So it can't be #1 or #2, right? Well let's see. Since both are/were operated from the same host site on the same network, we can discount that as a factor causing any difference between how the two communicate with the clients (you guys). Makes sense, right?

Look at it this way... you have two cars, the exact same road with the exact same conditions, using the exact same fuel, driven by the same driver. The only thing different is the car. This being the case, given that the driver drives exactly the same way both times, if one gets from point A to point B faster than the other, there's only one thing that can cause the difference. The cars. #3.

Let's take a look under the hood: And what do we find? It is virtually impossible for the "old" server to perform better than the "new" server based on performance specs. It's not even a fair comparison. We're comparing a Volkswagen Bug with a BMW E36.

I'm afraid I don't remember the exact specs of the old server. It was a rental. But I do remember the important stuff:
It was a single core Pentium processor running around 2.7Ghz with a 1066 Frontside Bus Speed, and 4G of 600Mhz RAM
The new server is running a Xeon dual-core 3,0GHz Processor, on a 1333 FSB with 2G of 667Mhz RAM

Translation: The new server's dual-core processor allows it to handle twice the instructions at the same time as a single core processor, at a slightly faster speed. The faster FSB allows it to input and output the information between the memory and the processor at a significantly faster speed and the higher memory speed means it can load and unload the files and information it needs to process at a faster rate. Because Freelancer is such a (relatively) simple game 2 Gb of memory is more than sufficient. 4 provides about 2.5 Gb of wasted potential.

Armed with that information we can safely say IT'S NOT THE SERVER!!!! If in fact it was the server, everyone would be having the same problems since we all use the same server.

Well then what  can be causing lag for some people and not others?

Part of the answer lies in the question. "Some people and not others."

Well, ok, not the people. I live by the motto "We're all the same" Even if some cars' engines have a little more horsepower than others, a car is still a car...

It's the computers the people are using.

There are two factors about your computer that can and will effect your lag, if you have any. But first let me explain PING. Ping is not a culprit. It's more an indicator of how fast your computer is or even how well your PC can communicate with the server. Ping is a measure of the time it takes for a bit of information to get from your PC to the server and back. A ping of 1000 is one second. 500, half a second. 200, 2-tenths of a second. 80, .8 of a tenth of a second. Yeah, if you have a 1000 ping  you're going to lag. And since all electrons are created equal (yes they all have the same size engine) and travel at the same speed, then differences in PING are caused by either distance, your computer's ability to get the little bit in and out and the server's ability to get the bit in and out. Since we're all pinging the same server, differences in ping can't be the server. Therefore it MUST be either your internet connection or your computer.

Bummer, eh?

But I digress. We're not talking about ping. We're talking about lag. Still they have that in common since there are two things that will cause you to experience lag now that we've discounted the server:

Your computer's video capability and your computer's access to the internet.

Rather than sit here and regurgitate it all to you, allow me to share a few informative articles  that explain in lay terms what causes lag and how you can help prevent it:

What can cause lag? http://www.facompanion.com/Tier2/TS_Lag.htm    ....    Use the links in this article to check your lag potential.

How can I reduce my lag? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tec ... 04418.html

More on the same: http://compsimgames.about.com/cs/gaming ... erform.htm

Oh, and here's an excerpt from a much-longer article I found for those who might say, Hey! I got the uberest of uber computers! And I'm running on a T-6 gigantic pipeline to the internet. There is absolutely NO WAY it's my computer

"While we are on the subject of lag, let me add some related info for 56k folks, DUN, Modems. When you get flamed or harassed online for lagging in a game, Do not take it personally. A 56k connection can cause the servers communication stack to stutter and every user on the server will experience it, Not just one or two. So, to make it short... One lagger will make the entire server step or stutter, not just the laggers machine."

BUMMER!

But hey, at least it's not the server. That was money well-spent.

Class dismissed.

And I probably should never have asked this question.

[gav]

thankyou for that ww, i was just about to post a similar thing but you beat me to it and probably did it a little better....


the new server is great.....it will allow the VOID to keep going for a good while yet and with the added bonus that its ours and no more rental costs!!! i can almost hear the a-teams wallet sighing with relief as a little less to pay out each month.

it runs the game better....it runs the game better,,,and did i mention it runs the game a whole lot  better than the old rent-a-car server!!!

i think what we have acomplised is one of the greatest things i have seen.
a group of guys and gals who some of us live hundereds of miles apart, from all corners of the globe, came together with an idea to save the place we call home

as frac said, a big well done to all who made it possible.



----------------

in response to your original question, i actually voted for  - I haven't noticed any difference at all.

reason for this is that my connection to the VOID has always been great, there are no jumpy NPC's, only ever had the yellow lag symbol once that i can remember...

so no I haven't noticed any difference at all. but then i wasnt expecting to...
the whole reason i donated  is because i knew things would be improved server side and am happy knowing that the NPCs are thinking a little quicker than they did  ;)

[Zebulon]

No Mate - It was a good question to ask. Maybe to start not everyone got where you were coming from.  My "box" is a shop bought standard "Tiny" - a company that went bust about a year ago if my memory serves me correct.  Ping varies from about 37 up to 60 depending. Lag is fairly infrequent - the source of my connection problem is very likely my ISP and my modem.  Everything I have is bog standard - no tweeks or add ons. The graphics card just about copes with the information and my modem is a bog standard BT one (cant remember the spec).  I will read up on the "How to reduce..." subject.

Thanks yet again for the hard work that you put into all of this.  For someone that doesn't know the difference between a large rock and a CPU this has certainly been an education.  I could pull the box apart and customise it with all sorts of mother boards and superduper chip related add on nonsense but I think the mrs would have a fit, a bit like taking the car engine apart on the living room floor. So, for the time being I will play with  what I have and so far on the new server I have not been "knocked off" or lagged even half as bad as I was on the old server.  

Cheers to all the A team and to all those that donated to get us our own dedicated box.....

[-Jan-]

[quote="[X]Thorn[X]";p="148123"]Srry to say m8s but the new server made Void a lag box all we get in major pvp is lagg and b4 we didn't have any lag at all

Thorn![/quote]

I also see no difference, if there is a little action in one system, the whole server become laggy .... sry to say it.

[JungChang]

In my honest opinion i cant see any difference between the old and new server.
Maybe the server load is less, but for me its pretty much the same.

[Fracture]

Thanks again for your help expalining Wolf,
sadly I think only a handful of players will actually soak it up.

Simply put:
4 guys with uber comps and great connections are PvPing in Nomad 1
5th guy shows up to fight with his 1.5gig older machine.
AS SOON AS the last guy comes into visual range of the others......
Now EVERYONE has a 1.5gig older machine ( relative to the game performance )
Red Lag Flag Icon appears....

Not the server computer to blame...   It is player #5's computer in this case.

[Watchwolf]

I'm ever the optimist.    

Nice way to boil it down to a couple of sentences. I need to learn how to do that...