Surefire Ways To Tune Your NS Server

Nupi · January 2003

I got 14 players, and things looked fine until map changed then it started to look so bad that i had to reverse to 12, but the lag didnt go away. I guess my line quality dropped. Ah i dont mind anymore as a matter of fact i'm thinking not to host a server, because its not enjoyable for clients.

I believe, changing sv_maxrate has very little effects anyway. I took it away completely and i was able to host 12-13 very well until the mysterious lag appereaded. When it apperead i simply didnt have any bandwith left..but i dont know where/why it happened.

ADSL is still kinda wierd, Downstream is sharing the bandwith with upstream channel. SDSL has its own channels for downstream/upstream so you can download at 110Kb and upload at 110Kb at the same time.. Ah..

Zdrone · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nupi @ Jan 8 2003, 11:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>SDSL has its own channels for downstream/upstream so you can download at 110Kb and upload at 110Kb at the same time.. Ah..</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Mine maxes out at 144k. I need to do some math...

eaglec · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nupi @ Jan 9 2003, 12:07 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>ADSL is still kinda wierd, Downstream is sharing the bandwith with upstream channel. SDSL has its own channels for downstream/upstream so you can download at 110Kb and upload at 110Kb at the same time.. Ah..</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Actually the biggest difference with sdsl is that you get the same bitrate upstream and downstream (Syscronous not Asyncronous)- I am unsure whether it truly delivers full duplex as well...

The bigest problem with home ADSL lines for serious users ( at least in the UK ) is contention. As you might be sharing you line during busy periods your bandwidth ca be as low as 1/50th of what you subscribed to.

If everyone stuck to a bit of light browsing , e-mail and playng the odd game then 50:1 contention would be fine but for servers and P2P application you need the full 512/256 or more. This is when you hit a problem. A person or a few people on your segment loads up kazaa and starts downloading a dozen movies or starts their own game server and your server is screwed. It's only going to get worse as broadband gets more popular.

Anyone know where you can get 1:1 contention broadband in the uk for less than £30/month?! What's the cheapest dsl 1:1 around? I checked adsl guide and it looks like its about £450/month + !

BTW - my servers been pretty quiet so far but no complaints about speed or pings with sv_maxrate 2000 and 16 players on a PIII-750(winXP). I am suprised to say the least.

Eternal_Bliss · January 2003

i got 12 slots server but it lags with even 8-9 ppl in it..
cpu is not on 100%, my line is not capped so i put maxrate to 10000..
anything else to make my server not laggy?

eaglec · January 2003

what do you mean your line is not capped! What is your upload/download bandwidth. Is it cable/adsl or leased, what contention? 1:1, 20:1, 50:1 - your ISP should be able to answer these questions.

[edit]
Setting sv_maxrate to 10000 means that at 9 players your server could be trying to upload 700kb/s. Normally you'd need a leased or bussiness line to get that kind of upload speed.
[/edit]

SandTyger · January 2003

I'm running a win32 server on a T1 thru a hardware firewall. P3 933, 384mb, 14 players.

Are there any suggestions for my sv_maxrate for this case?

Are there any other tweaks that you would suggest for this case. Our average pings are very good for local area players (less than 40ms) but everyone once in a while we experience a spike.

-Brendan
aka [OF]SandTyger

Eternal_Bliss · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (eaglec @ Jan 10 2003, 11:54 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>what do you mean your line is not capped! What is your upload/download bandwidth. Is it cable/adsl or leased, what contention? 1:1, 20:1, 50:1 - your ISP should be able to answer these questions.

[edit]
Setting sv_maxrate to 10000 means that at 9 players your server could be trying to upload 700kb/s. Normally you'd need a leased or bussiness line to get that kind of upload speed.
[/edit]</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
100Mbit line <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'>
i have no limit, it's hosted in an ISP but i got a good deal so they didn't limit me(i can download and upload at 10M<b>BYTE</b>/sec

Roobubba · January 2003

It's cos you're rubbish EB that's the reason <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

Bigtoy · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Actually the biggest difference with sdsl is that you get the same bitrate upstream and downstream (Syscronous not Asyncronous)- I am unsure whether it truly delivers full duplex as well...
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

<TELECOM GEEK MODE>
Just being a bit of a nit picker here. I am pretty sure the synchronicity (sp?) of the DSL has nothing to do with the upstream and downstream having the same bitrate. I am pretty sure that if the telco wanted they could provide equivalent upstream and downstream bitrates on an asynchronous DSL line. (And vice versa, they could limit the upstream bandwidth on a synchronous DSL line.)

The A or S in the DSL describes the underlying technology or method that the DSL modem (its really not a modem, but for lack of a better word...) communicated with the head end DSL equipment.

Asynchronous means that the modem and head end termination equipment "independantly" agree on what frequencies are optimal for transmitting data.

Synchronous means that the modem and head end termination equipment use some form of handshake to determine which frequencies are optimal.
</TELECOM GEEK MODE>

Grimm_Spector · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Howler @ Nov 8 2002, 12:49 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I run a 14 player server on an Athlon XP 2000+, 512 mb DDR, Windows 2000 machine. At least for me, the maps make all of the difference. I just observed the difference between ns_eclipse and ns_hera. As previously noted, Eclipse is good (about 5 - 20% total CPU usage) and Hera is horrendous (about 55 - 80% total CPU usage). That's quite a difference in CPU usage by merely having different maps loaded. Oh and as for memory, Eclipse used about 200 mb of memory, while Hera uses about 300 mb.

Edit:

Just played ns_nancy, CPU usage never got above 25% for the whole round.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I'd say the reason for the difference in CPU usage, look at Hera, look at the number of steam vents and such, and the number of lights, there's a lot more light, which slows processes, amongst other things.

I'd say it's a pretty obvious call, but lately I've been on servers where my ping barely goes up on Hera, if you need advice on server settings I recommend you check out a couple servers that you can grab the IPs of from here: www.chimayhem.org

Enjoy.

BlueHoney · January 2003

I'm running a dedicated NS server at my uni in the UK (which is behind a firewall, so we can't join everyone elses 8(.... ) and i've found that OS makes a huge difference to cpu load.

Originally running the dedicated on Win2k on an Athlon 1.4ghz, 512mb ddr etc... and was recieving ping of around 100 on caged, eclipse nothing etc.. at full server load (16) and pings of 400ish on bast and hera

Since changing to Win XP Pro, however, i have increased the server size to 24 for the smaller maps, and can run 16 players on bast or hera with next to no lag...

For the 24 player games i recieve pings of around 80, and for bast and hera they are about 30-40.....

On other notes NS is the best thing to happen to the Half-Life engine in a very long time, so amazing work to all the team, thanks so much....

BH

Grimm_Spector · January 2003

Well, my post makes me sound like the OS doesn't matter, which it does, but I'm saying even without the upcoming update, we can make up for a lot of it, by fine tuning the server settings, both the OS System itself and the games settings.

Grimm Spector <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'>

cracker_jackmac · January 2003

you guys are beating a dead horse.

Grimm_Spector · January 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (cracker jackmac @ Jan 24 2003, 07:32 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>you guys are beating a dead horse.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
hahaha, probably once 1.04 comes out, but still, it's a conversation...

Grimm Spector <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'>

Nupi · January 2003

Well, i'm back. I got a question for you guys when your server is full, how much FPS is your server boosting?.

I just did reinstall my OS + HL and NS / Patch. Because MSVC++ made a mess of everything but thats another story <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'>. Now it seems that server fps is somewhat locked to 64.0 , its really stable though. It used to be 99.7 but i guess it was little too high, it was changing a lot..maybe that caused the lag spikes as well and excessive crashes. Which is better, stable fps or high fps which keeps changing around alot ?.

scottl · January 2003

WAHOO!, 1.04 is out, ADD IT!

scottl · February 2003

Just curious. Performance was a great boost with 1.04 but has anyone found any tricks to get more of a boost? I still run the entity stripper(MM plugin) to keep mine @ better pings, But any tweaks to the config help out with 1.04? And if possible can a moderator clean out this Thread?, get rid of just and stuff that doesn't matter so people don't have to read thru 8 pages. and does any information within the pages still help with 1.04?

cracker_jackmac · April 2003

<a href='http://www.tech9.net/rml/linux/' target='_blank'>http://www.tech9.net/rml/linux/</a>

apply that to the 2.4.19 kernel on your box. Easy 0-20% CPU decrease. (its not really offical as i've been the only one to test it).

I'd like some feed back plz.

Akasha · April 2003

I have a dual AMD 2400 xp,win2k on a 155mb line 16 slots and the cpu useage is around 89% any ideas to reduce cpu useage on this kind of server ?
theres a BF1942 server running on the same box and that only uses 3% cpu

cracker_jackmac · April 2003

strip some entities out of the maps <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

Eternal_Bliss · April 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (cracker jackmac @ Apr 24 2003, 12:03 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> strip some entities out of the maps <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
for more information go to www.modns.org forums and you will find there how to do it.

PRIMER · April 2003

I don't know what it is, but the scores make the server lag a lot. If you use voogru's no-scores plugin, it helps for those big or small servers.
I expect whatever problem it was caused by is fixed for 1.1.

Akasha · April 2003

i have heard people have had problems after stripping entitys out and tbh its not something i want to risk on a public server

Akasha · April 2003

could someone make a sticky with all the server settings which work for differnet sizes of servers ?
this would be very helpfull

mcgoo · June 2003

Hey guys, I just want to add my 20c. After reading all of the posts here...i cant help but thinking...WTH?

I would be OUTRAGED if the pings hit 60ms.

We run a server on dual 2.8ghz xeons with 2gb ddr. Average ping is 18ms on cable (client side).

cracker_jackmac · June 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Akasha @ Apr 24 2003, 06:19 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> could someone make a sticky with all the server settings which work for differnet sizes of servers ?
this would be very helpfull  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
there is already a thread...look at it...but you can't have the same settings...they are diff for diff servers...

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Hey guys, I just want to add my 20c. After reading all of the posts here...i cant help but thinking...WTH?

I would be OUTRAGED if the pings hit 60ms.

We run a server on dual 2.8ghz xeons with 2gb ddr. Average ping is 18ms on cable (client side).</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Its slightly more complicated than that.

adrain · June 2003

i want to buy hardware for a ns-server.
what hardware is required and what is recommend?
i want to keep the machine real small so i'm thinking about a VIA Epia M10000 Mainboard which has 1,0 gig processor onboard...is this enough cpu-power?

SuperBOB · June 2003

Yeah thats fine for one NS server, especially if and when 1.1 hits :-)
Dont expect to load it up with plugins and have 80 slots though..

Rotten_Flesh · June 2003

Using many metamod plugins tends to lag the server and make it crash more. I used to have 17 plugins on my server, it crashed every few maps. Now i have around 7 and it hasnt crashed in 2 weeks <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

The more client interaction the plugins do (chat variables, lerk lift, etc) the more information is flooded onto the server which will cause it to crash.

BTW its 20 slots.

adrain · June 2003

cool, a 16 player server would be fine for me

Surefire Ways To Tune Your NS Server

Comments