Questions regarding weird FN issues...

[PY004]

After observing some of the servers after we connected to FN... The servers overall got a lot more "laggy". Initially, I thought something was wrong with the server and load. However, processor usage is less than 7% and still got over 7GB of free RAM. HDD load is fine, so I started to look into this issue.

Whenever a player joins, that server lags. At the same time, all the servers connected to the same port in FN seems to lag, at least my servers do. For example, when a player joins, then server 2-5 all get few lag spikes each about 200ms long. Same is true for servers 6-10.

Was wondering if there's a solution to this, or if it's normal.

 

[Thothie]

Bursts of lag when players load, on or off FN, is normal (and to be expected given the massive array of scripts that load for the player, in addition to the usual seventy some-odd item scripts [trying to work on that].) There's also a lot of superfluous messages going on behind the scenes that you don't see, but I think we may already have a solution for that.

There's also the dedicated ~4k message you get when characters are transferred from FN to the server, and again from the server to the client, which happens once with each connect. I gave you two ports to mitigate the load on the FN end, although it shouldn't have any affect on the other servers using the same port, unless characters connect to all servers in unison (which seems unlikely), as writes are passive, happening every 6 seconds or so. Hrmm...

Dunno if MiB has any other ideas.

 

[The Man In Black]

Are the servers all running on the same box? If so I'm wondering if all servers connected to that port try to process the player, but give up when they're not there..

As for all the processing nightmare from char load.. Mid-typing I came up with a terrible idea.. Nothing I can do right now, though. It might be something I can do when I look into the inventory redesign, as it would mean an increase in entities (though, would still be lower than it is now if the inventory redesign works)

 

[PY004]

MSC Servers 1-5 are running in the VA Server/Box #1 connecting to FN port 5709.
MSC Servers 6-10 are running in the TX Server/Box connecting to FN port 5710.

I guess I could cascade it so that 1 connects to 5709, then 2 connects to 5710, then 3 connects to 5709, etc since the server load usually tends to be either most in VA or most in TX depending on the time of the day.

When the lag spikes occur, the CPU usage for all the servers drops to almost no usage for on average 100ms on the VA server and 80ms on the TX server. The duration of each lag spike in game is also around that value. Also it's not just a single lag spike, it's multiple lag spikes in a row. When the map on one server changes and players rejoin, then there's a lot of lag spikes occuring in a row that they combine into one massive lag spike and gets worse the more amount of players are rejoining. Similar spikes seem to occur when the server is restarted and is establishing connection to FN.

Pinging FN from my VA server results in 102ms average, and 73ms for the TX server. Given how closely this is to the lag spike's duration, it may be that it happens while the server is waiting for data or something.

Well, just my hypothesis. Doubt it's right.

 

[The Man In Black]

I'm not ready to rule anything out, though I don't think that's the issue. Probably just a coincidence. Servers are always looping to see if FN has sent anything, and FN sends more than just characters. Like I said, I won't rule it out. I'll look into this issue more later.

 

[cartman-2000]

After observing some of the servers after we connected to FN... The servers overall got a lot more "laggy". Initially, I thought something was wrong with the server and load. However, processor usage is less than 7% and still got over 7GB of free RAM. HDD load is fine, so I started to look into this issue.

Whenever a player joins, that server lags. At the same time, all the servers connected to the same port in FN seems to lag, at least my servers do. For example, when a player joins, then server 2-5 all get few lag spikes each about 200ms long. Same is true for servers 6-10.

Was wondering if there's a solution to this, or if it's normal.

I'm wondering, do you have the -noaff flag set on the servers? there's a bit of a problem with hl1 servers if you don't use that flag on dual core or more computers, the core the first server starts on, all other servers will be locked to that core, without that flag.