Maniaplanet Forum

OK here we go
Maybe it is just a stupid idea, but since a never heard it anywhere i thought lets just trow this in

Whats it about:
From our servers, the LYNX Siege is the most popular. At certain points, which seems player count independent, the game lags. This comes and this goes. Since this runs on a dedicated hexacore 3Ghz, 16GB memory, 100Mbps connection, i would rule out server resources out for this issue.

After playing around for a couple of weeks with all kind of settings, i noticed that it seemed that when there are players with custom content are there, these lags where more frequent visible. After this notice i chose to enable the servers p2p option with a 3 Gb cache size. Within a day the cache folder already contained over 1Gb of custom content from players. Up to this point i saw a decrease of comments from lagging players. I also saw different skins, between 25-40Mb in size, not found on maniapark, and thus likely skins without locator's. I also watch live the size buildup from 1-2 skins, which took up to 15 minutes before the whole file was cached on the server.

My 2 cents:
If a player with a small upload and custom content (that is going to be send by the client) connects to the server, a p2p to other clients is build to distribute the content, his upload be will be even smaller, playing and sharing - effecting the response times and thus snapshot delta? for everybody.

The Idea:
When a player want to connect to the server to play, the server lets the client send a file. This file should be large enough to calculate the estimated upload speed of the connecting player, small enough to have an acceptable entry time for the server. If the speed is below a configurable value in the dedicated, this player is not allowed to enter, and must get a notification why. (e.g. your internet is too slow, turn off your torrents, ask your family to go off the computer and go to bed .lol.) If the speed is above this value, the player enters the server.

Like i said, it could be stupid, but i thought it was worth sharing here.

Greetz,
LYNX-Weerwolf

I have no knowledge about netcode, so i also do not know if programming that would do something about effects of a player with a high ping. I went to this on what i could see. And that is that oversees players connect, especially from brazil bring a ping with them around 200-300 which has a really big effect on everyone. Not allowing such connections was my first thing on my control do do something about that. The research i have done on the ping part did not only show that oversees players have high pings, but also suprisingly much french players (around 70-90). Other european country a lot less (from 20-50). I am convinced this has something to do about peerings in the network between france and Germany (where the dedicated is).

PEERING!
Traffic accross the globe is going trough diffrent international company's and lines. Instead of paying each other for used bandwith, all these providers sort of exchange bandwith to make all connection to anywhere possible. This is called 'peering'. There are diffrent 'big pipes' running trough europe, so called transit lines or T1.

Budget hosters often have only limited exchange on 1 T1 line, so if traffic through this line is not possible, it runs trough other lines, but with lower bandwith and ping. If u choose to go with a premium network provider, which will reroute through multiple T1 lines, u will not have this problem. But... Open up your pockets, this comes with a high price!!

Note that u do not have this issue with Trackmania, these higher pings are only noticable with Shootmania. So conclusion: I accept that this has some lag issues for players, and i hope they will understand too. Only other choice would be to make 'payed access' servers, and guess no one is waiting for that ....

Issue can be:

- Location wise. Server is in Germany but the server is running in Netherlands->Limburg for Instance so it bounce back from Germany and Netherlands. That can make issues due the different hops your connection is going through.

- Client -> Server -> Client if you run a connection higher than 50 MB download 50 MB upload, do not set your connection to high but set it to 2 MB in setting.

Here come my 2 cents

There has to come a controler wich truely checks for high pings etc.
Because i know that mostly on server side everything is ok ( because mostly server hosters know what the do )
So let them set a value, so that players with slow internet cant com in untill the have better connection, or send them to servers with lower ping.
Because a lot off players dont know what to do about there lagging PC, or the are just to lazy to do something about that. ( not all offcourse )
So Nadeo and server hosters have to come to a agreement ( or not ) to set a value for entereing the server.
So Weerwolf +1
Because i hate lagging, because some one with a ping over 150 try's to enter and slows things down.
Also happens on other game's, ping to high is kick or not enter server. ( bam thats it )
So lets not try to re invent the weel, but make it a bitt better and use the powers