Server load is dependant on the quality of pc hardware hosting and any mods used. Rough guide it shouldn't be over 300 for 30 players if just a standard FL server with no mods.

---

Out of curiosity, what happens if 30 players are connected, and a player with a ping of 350+ logs in? Does it lag out all the players on the server?

---

Some times yes, but more likely someone is downloading while playing, this is a known ping cheat making them near impossible to hit.

can also be someone using a mod, have a read through my basic cheat detection guide here

Edited by - Pinger on 8/11/2004 12:23:56 AM

We dont have much of a problem with modders.

I am an avid modder and can spot most mods.
Even so, some mods are used by players to help increase their playing experiance. (Such as 3k speed mod for trading, and I give each player an invincible starflier for storage if they request)

I would of assumed 300ms would of been a huge lag on the server.

When 10 players are on my server, the average server load is about 6-12ms

Sometimes, a single player might be on and the load is over 20ms??
I am usally not on when this happens, but I dont think its a mod as their server file looks normal. (yes it could be a speed mod or similar, but when we tested running different mods on the server VERY few got the load over 10ms)

thats not much of a jump in load, would say a modder would at least double the server load usually if not a bigger increase. So a rise of 10ms can just be a laggy player or the comfortable limits of your servers hardware being exceeded. But if its 6-12 and jumps to 40 plus then would have a good look at the last player to join.

But for the server its self Ideally the server shouldn't have anything but:

windows {2000 server if possible for stability}
flserver
admin utilities: FLadmin, IFSO ,remote connection
firewall
plenty ram
HD with 7200 spindle speed

Would say don't put a virus scanner on or it'll steal cpu cycles just at the wrong times

T1 indicates high bandwidth in both directions (1.5 Mbps) so I agree with Pinger, server hardware is the limiting factor's here. In the past when I had one ADSL line I had large amounts of players (up to 24) on but never consistantly over 100 msecs server load (my own limit). The lag present though was due to the single ADSL line. Now with two ADSL lines traffic concerns are eased somewhat and with 29 players before our SuperMod we had 80-90 msecs. After the SuperMod was installed we've had 19 players on and server load was barely 40 msecs. Disclaimer: of course what is going on the server at the time determines how heavy the load is so players trading the least load, players doing missions more load and large groups PvPing highest loads. The numbers above are roughly average.

Lag is relative and is thought of as the times for server load, ping time and the client's load time. Yellow lag in a client's 'puter starts at about 300 msecs and red lag is about 500 msecs. Sometimes it can be manifested as a jumpy player ship but other times you may not notice a difference in the other player's ship at all. A player with 350 msec ping MAY cause some players grief on the server but it seems this is less of an issue than it seems. You would think it causes everyone on the server to slow down but if this has happened it's not noticable unless he's affcting server load. I have seen it happen with players nearby to a player with a poor 56k dial-up connection (got only 28.8k speed) but not for everyone on the server.

Mods from a client require a lot of traffic to compensate for the faster updates. This is exacerbated by the amount of players on the server. Server load and accompanying modder bandwidth (if applicable) will increase expotentially as player amounts increase. This is what I have seen on my server. So if you are allowing these mods on your server, all the server loads you are given are going to be skewed and only for the worse.

As for hardware & software on the server for optimum FL server use, I basically agree with Pinger except for a few things:
- Any Windoze from XP or NT families on up is stable enough. I run WinXPPro and it has been just fine. (never could get Win2k to work when I started so I stayed with WinXPPro and never looked back)
- Software firewall is a waste of CPU cycles and possibly ineffective. Get a hardware one which is best and save some CPU cycles. (if a hardware firewall is what you meant Pinger, then I am agreeing with you )
- Fast hard drives are a misnomer in this case. Files written and read are relatively small while the server is up, saved game files <200k and a few INI files although the files for the admin programs can be quit large but only a MB or two. Or files accessed while the server is being loaded in which case it's loaded into memory (I TOTALLY agree with Pinger's suggestion of a large amount of RAM, I have 1 GB, flserver unmodded uses 350-500 MB of memory). In both of these cases the spindle speeds are not a big deal but HDD caches might be.

_____________
Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
Server community website & forum: EarendilsPlace.net (server rules)

Thanks for the info, here are my hardware specs: link
(Running Win2k Server with a hardware firewall)

Currently, we have not gotten a load over 30ms and there is hardly any lag.

I did notice that once, we had 6 players and the load was 22ms and the players said there was a 3minute lag??? Only lasted till a few players logged off (didnt get the names as the players did not give me the time of when the lag stopped).

Think this could be caused by a modder,or just high ping?

Also, how do I get the IP address of players so I find out the ping time?
I tried fl connections monitor but kept getting error messages.

The FLConnMon is an old program that is no longer supported although it should have listed at least IP addresses. It works in concert with FLAcctBrowser but with it's decrypting server down the program doesn't update it's XML files and thus FLAcctBrowser character names do not link to IP addresses in FLConnMon.

If you use FLAC though you'll be set with IP addresses and their link to character names. It has several overlapping features with IFSO but does other things so well that you'll not want to tell anyone exactly what it does when you do find out!

As for what players see, all they see is no icon, a yellow icon and a red icon. They also see ping but that's in the FL global list screen before you even log on to a server. The yellow icon comes on at approximately 350 msecs between the server and the client, red at approx. 500 msecs. A player saw 3 minutes lag? How would they know? They may mean ping. Lag as seen by a client would be a total of times such as server load, network time to ping responder (the server itself if the server doesn't have a hardware gateway), the ping time which is the time between the server response and the client's ping initiator (client's own hardware gateway or the 'puter itself) and delay to run FL itself. Some of these delays are miniscule but they add up and can be aggravated by other factors. For example running defrag while playing FL is not advisable.

22 msecs with 6 players on a modded server sounds about right. If the players were seeing lag then chances it was with their connections or yours.

_____________
Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
Server community website & forum: EarendilsPlace.net (server rules)