If you look at what I posted in a thread of yours here or in an old thread here, you can see some reasons. Anything that is not fixed between the client and the server, like NPC's, other players, your own location, loot, etc. is what is sent as traffic between the client and the server.

Thus if a lot of players are doing missions you will have more lag than if there are fewer players doing mission. Or if players are within sight of each other instead of scattered all over Sirius. If players don't experience lag, then it shouldn't be a problem. Chances if they are it's a bandwidth (seen in ping time) issue, not the few msecs added due to server load.

As for your server running at 100%, get a more powerful server or lower the maximum player limit. If it is running flat out server load will climb drastically.

BTW the vast majority of cheaters I have seen ARE newbies, newbies to the server. Once they've been around for a while eventually they'll be caught or else they are very circumspect.

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

I read through all the posts and have tried almost everything listed and that I can think of.

You mentioned getting better hardware? Well, I have pretty much the best hardware availible withtout getting the new $900+ Athlon64 FX.

As mentioned in my hardware specs, im using the newest AthlonXP: The 3200+ Barton.
With 1024MBs of corsairs BEST DDR memory in duel channel mode.
The harddrive is one of the best drives around as it is Serial ATA and has a throughput of 150MBs. If I am correct, these specs are almost the same you have on your server Earendil? Yet you have no CPU load problems.

We just got a connection upgrad on our servers to a fully burstable 2.0 up and down internet connection. (About 1.3 times faster then a T1).

It still has not helped. We are even running at or very near to 100% CPU load with very few players (3-6).

I am never at the server and use a program to access it remotly and see the screen. The CPU is working so hard there is a 5-40 second delay just to move the cursor. I checked the task manager and Flserver.exe is hogging the entire cpu, a few other programs like windows services only use about 1%.

I even spoke to one of the admins at MC and he suggested running another defrag and to install the freelancer 1.3 SDK. I ran two defrags on the server, and installed the SDK. I even ran a virus scan just incase and did about 6 spyware scans. All squeky clean.

If anything, the CPU load seems worse now, and I am sure that it is because of the SDK, as it is slightly different then the files the clients use and it is "modded".

I am running out of ideas, I can BARLEY even use ioncross to edit a player rep or to move a police to a different system, its just too slow. I am pretty sure it is not a hardware issue, because as I have stated I have some pretty good equipment, nothing is cheap. I only used the best brands, ASUS, seagate, Corsair, Plextor etc.

Is there ANYTHING I can do to drop the cpu load?
On MC freeport (I think thats the name), they had about 40+ players and the CPU load was only 20%????? That sounds more like what it should be.

THE01

Edited by - the01 on 9/8/2004 12:34:22 AM

Edited by - the01 on 9/8/2004 12:35:00 AM

No you are right, sounds like there is something funky with flserver and it's associated programs like DirectX. I doubt it is something else since you seem to have covered everything else (defrags, scans, task manager views, etc.)

I will rattle my brain and come out with some related questions that may or may not help you. Answer if you wish.

1) I never did trust Win2k after my experience with it but others have gotten it to work. Is it fully up to date with all the service packs and all? The latest DirectX should be in them.
2) The original flserver had a memory leak and I feel when it has been patched a memory leak still exists but it's very small. How many threads and memory is flserver using?
3) You said players get lag now? Have you logged on yourself and seen when the lag appears?
4) I find flserver uses about 5 ports (one is INCOMING) and DirectX uses about 5 more ports. Can you run port detectors and sniffers (I run Diamond CS Port Explorer) and see what is being used there?
5) Maybe there are some slowdowns in your Internet pipe, can you monitor traffic to determine speed over time?
6) You should determine each player's traffic as well. Install FLAC and it displays each player's traffic in terms of UDP packets per second.
7) You said it's a remote 'puter you access and you can see the task manager so I doubt anything else is running on your server you are not aware of. What about the Internet pipe itself? Is it shared?
Not sure if your mod has it or if you mentioned it but does your server have the M$ patch?
9) There are often a heck of a lot of warnings and error messages in flserver's console window (which nobody STILL knows what most of them mean!). I have noticed though they seem to increase with with cheaters around. Anything strange or any strange messages in flserver's console window?

I agree with your system specs you should be cooking. I have the exact same configuration (sorry, forgot to read it before) except the HDD which should make little difference, I don't use the SDK (although some of my mod files, inserted individually and not by FLMM, are from SDK installations) and my Internet pipe which is two ADSL lines with my bandwidth limitation being the uplink at 2 x 384kbps. I checked my speed on unmodded FL and noticed twice as much traffic in the uplink over downlink! After the SuperMod that traffic was closer to being even which is much more desirable as my uplink is the smallest pipe. Still once I ran 29 players comfortable enough at about 80 msecs server load and that was without our SuperMod. With the SuperMod on average I get 1 msec load per player! Maybe you could run our mod (or other random NPC reducing mods), temporarily and see if that would help. At the least it may give you an idea where your problem lies.

The only time I had significant CPU usage issues were before the patch and with lots of players on the Athlon 1800. Sure cheaters can cause server load to increase but my players see lag which I believe was related to the single ADSL pipe I used to have, not the CPU. I am so sure CPU usage by flserver is not an issue that I have increased run priority of flserver (right-click on flserver in Process tab in Task Manager, set to next higher setting, AboveNormal) so there is even a better chance at reducing server load plus the demands of IFSO and thus reduce lag.

Keep posting or feel free to email me directly and I'll continue to help you as I can. Good luck.

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

Quick update.

I double checked the directx version and it was only 9.0.
I installed 9.0c and removed the sdk, the server is now performing better.

Under 10 players the cpu load is only between 65%-90%, but over 15 players is usually 90%-100%. The server is much more responsive now, although when I have 20 players it does start "lagging" my remote connection window.
It is better then being at a constant 100%, bit its still way to high. MC freeport said their CPU load was only 20% with about 40 players.

To answer a few of your questions, the connection is shared, but very few people use it. Even when not a single person was using the connection, the cpu load was high.

I am on a direct 1gigabit connection to the server so I never see any lag in the game. The only "lag" I might see if players skipping around if they are lagging. But I never get a red or yellow icon regardless of what the server load/cpu load is. (Once we had a major modder on and the server load jumped to about 450ms, even then I did not see any lag, although other players did)

I do have the 1.1fl patch installed, that was one of the first things I did.
I THINK (but dont quote me, I would need to check again) that the memory used by flserver when the cpu load was at 100% and we had 19 or so players was 160-200MBs.

I have been testing download/upload speeds randomly over the past week since we got our connection upgraded, it seems to stay at a good 2mbps. (Note, I meausre this by downloading files from high-speed servers and website speed tests. I have not yet used any tools to check the speed).

With FLAC, is it server only? Or do the clients need to install it too?
I am really trying to stay away from mods/apps that the players need to download as alot of them dont know how, or feel errie about doing so.

I will try to check on the rest of the settings you mentioned and get back to you.
I wanted to keep you updated on how things are going.

Thanks again!

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PitchBlack Server Admin
Server Forums

Well you specs after the DirectX v9.0c install seem better but not quite what I was seeing before I changed my server-side mod. To direct compare it seems there is only one facter difference, the OS. I don't want to guess that's the problem though. What about your other comparison? What is the MC server running? Unless they are running a mod or some dual CPU system 20% CPU usage at 40 players is lower than I've ever seen or heard of.

FLAC is strictly used by admins on servers. It is not like FLCD. It is called anti-cheat because it attempts to detect and deal with those players whose data rates (in UDP packets per second) are considered out of the norm. Think of an addition to IFSO in combating cheaters and helping admins administer things.

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

I am not sure of the specs MC was using. Ill see if I can find out.

Thanks for answering my question for FLAC.
Where can I download it though? I searched in your other posts and also the links in your sig and unless I am totally overlooking it, I cannot find a link anywhere?

Also, I just changed the flserver.exe, fladmin.exe amd connectionsmon.exe priority to low. Guess what> MUCH better performance!
The players experiance no lag, the server load seems a little lower, and I can now (most of the time) still control the computer remotly at a good 10fps or so.
The cpu load is now about 80%-99% in use when 15 players are on. With 20 or more players it still jumps to 100%, but at least its better!

I will keep trying the suggestions you made and install FLAC once I get the link.

Thanks again for all your help.

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PitchBlack Server Admin
Server Forums

Try for Eagle's forums here. You have to first register on his board and then post to a forum asking for access to the FLAC forums. You have to prove you are an admin so give that info and you should be good to go. Good luck.

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

I sent the email, im just waiting for a response.

After more testing, the low priority level on the Flserver only has an effect with under 15 players. After that it becomes almost totally unusable again.
Its strange because the server load is much better now (only about 2ms a player) and even with the crazy CPU usage we get almost no lag.

You mentioned that you both are using nearly identical hardware for your servers. What about the motherboards and drivers , are they the same ?

On my side, I don't remember the exact CPU usage figures before the installation of the SuperMod. I do remember that before the SuperMod I could squeak out 24 players on a good day but not all days are good so I kept it at 19 players. I distinctly remember server load was never above 100 msecs and thus complaints of lag were found to be due to the Internet pipes (specifically weak uplinks), not the server CPU usage or server load.

For the last few months before the SuperMod I was running an Athlon XP 2500 Barton FSB 166 MHz overclocked to a 3200 FSB 200 MHz. Also the motherboard was the M7NCD Pro by Biostar, an nForce2 chipset and the dual memory bus in use (two 512 MB DDR400 DIMMs). I changed the CPU and motherboard as I was getting once a week lockups and guessed they may have been the problem. Drivers in use are what came with the motherboard.

Currently I run on the server a real (not overclocked) Athlon XP 3200 Barton FSB 200 MHz and the motherboard is A7N8X-X by Asus, an nForce2 chipset with a single memory bus but with a total of 1 GB DDR400 DIMMs. Drivers in use are what came with the motherboard.

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

Just thought I would bring you all up to date.

I did a full reinstall of freelancer on the server, then restored the accounts and mods.
Its now working great!
I get an average of 3ms load with 7 players and a CPU load of 15% or so.

Looks like maybe a freelancer "system" file was corrupt or something.

Thanks again for all your help guys!