Re: Connection solutions (from Ask the Staff)

[Dalmeth]

5 MB doesn't seem that good. For that matter, neither does 10MB. Of course, I am thinking of those things in terms of computers, and not so much connections.

Well, for one thing, it's not MB but Mb.  Megabit.  Given that, I really don't know what Halaster is talking about.

[Saikun]

For our text based game, 1Mb would probably be overkill. We currently have a 3Mb incoming and 768K outgoing connection. The 768K is a little tight, but since the GDB moved to Zalanthas.org, it's been OK. Our problem has always been the stability of the external network, not so much the bandwidth of it. The bandwidth problems only come into play when some player decides they want to web-spider the entirety of the web site, and it clogs up our outgoing connection. I still subscribe to the theory that slowdown during HRPT events is not due to bandwidth limits (so much), but that the base, brain-stem DIKU code still only does one thing at a time. While 160 people are fighting a huge battle, the game still has to give time slices to all the kanks out there twitching, the gith moving from room to room, etc.

Anyway, I'd like to have a more stable network connection, but (aside from our upstream speed) not necessarily a faster one. The problem is that the next step up from where we are, we'd end up paying as much in a month as we currently do in a year.

-S

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

...well, crap.

I guess there is no sort of easy solution, is there?

Thanks for explaining that. I understand almost fully now, I think.

Still, if I ever have the easily free resources, rest assured that we have the next step up.

[Halaster]

5 MB doesn't seem that good. For that matter, neither does 10MB. Of course, I am thinking of those things in terms of computers, and not so much connections.

Well, for one thing, it's not MB but Mb.  Megabit.  Given that, I really don't know what Halaster is talking about.

When I say 5Mb/5Mb I mean 5Mb downstream and 5Mb upstream - at the same time.

[amoeba]

I still subscribe to the theory that slowdown during HRPT events is not due to bandwidth limits (so much), but that the base, brain-stem DIKU code still only does one thing at a time. While 160 people are fighting a huge battle, the game still has to give time slices to all the kanks out there twitching, the gith moving from room to room, etc.

I can obviously only see and interpret as an outsider, but the indications I got during the recent HPPT issue was of a flooded network rather than an disk i/o, cpu bound issue.  Pinging ginka produced a 30% to 80% packet loss. Pinging one hop up from ginka had 0% packet loss at all times.  Also indicitive was while on, with a user count of over 100, commands were quite speedy, until the packet loss started.  

A few weeks back I saw this behavior with our networks here. If you were on the console, everything was quite responsive, yet while this was happening our switch was flooded, effectivly killing off our network.  Basiclly network I/O was through the roof.  I know with the hardware you describe it would take way more than 100+ connections to flood the network I/O.  I have at least that many on our network everyday with more demanding applications than telnet.

Anyway, this is all speculative, just from one user's view. I have every confidence that you have stellar equipment, and absolute expertise, seriously. You may be already, but I would throw into the mix nefarious intentional or incidental influences.

[Saikun]

I meant the slowdown during past HRPTs. I was speaking more generally. The problem during the last, abortive attempt at an HRPT was probably an upstream network thing that we didn't have any control over. We're unable to see anything that would indicate that there was a problem with Ginka at the time.

As far as incidental or intentional disturbances, I wouldn't rule that out at all. We've had this DNS name for a long time, and we get a lot of crap coming our way. Ginka filters out well over 10,000 pieces of spam mail per week at this point. There's always machines scanning us, throwing half-hearted hack attempts our way, and all that. The signal to noise ratio is getting worse and worse, and that's something we're probably going to have to address soon, bandwidth-wise. None of this garbage ever gets to Ginka, but by hitting the firewall, it's still sucking down bandwidth. It's getting to the point where even if no players are logged in, the network is still pretty busy. So, I don't know. All I can say is we're actively monitoring the situation to make sure the lag and such is definitely nothing we can fix on Ginka. Once we isolate the actual problem, and come up with a viable solution, we'll fix it.

-S

[Ava]

(I'm seeing this again on Friday night...10 PM EDT.)

Staff/network people, what's the best thing to do when teh evil lag is hitting? The behavior I see is that
(a) I suddenly get no response to commands. Sometimes the connection drops.
(b) When I try to reconnect, I either get no response, a partial mantis, or partway into the login...I often stall after "C" or the username prompt.

What's the right thing to do when this happens?
(1) Keep reconnecting. The socket's trashed.
(2) Wait at the hung prompt.  Reconnecting just slows things down.

[mansa]

(I'm seeing this again on Friday night...10 PM EDT.)

Staff/network people, what's the best thing to do when teh evil lag is hitting? The behavior I see is that
(a) I suddenly get no response to commands. Sometimes the connection drops.
(b) When I try to reconnect, I either get no response, a partial mantis, or partway into the login...I often stall after "C" or the username prompt.

What's the right thing to do when this happens?
(1) Keep reconnecting. The socket's trashed.
(2) Wait at the hung prompt.  Reconnecting just slows things down.

I'm also getting this.  *Cry*

[Halaster]

It doesn't matter what you do, you're not going to affect it much.  What I personally do, is:  if I'm playing a PC, I type save, then I log out - because I don't want to die because of lag.  Then I go do something else because I'm tired of fighting the slow connection.  But as for you, it doesn't matter much, you're not going to hurt it be reconnecting.

[John]

It doesn't matter what you do, you're not going to affect it much.  What I personally do, is:  if I'm playing a PC, I type save, then I log out - because I don't want to die because of lag.  Then I go do something else because I'm tired of fighting the slow connection.  But as for you, it doesn't matter much, you're not going to hurt it be reconnecting.

is there anything we can send to any Imm that would let them track down the problem quicker? A log? Just an alert to say "lag started at time X and continued until time Y"? Or do the right Imms already have easy enough ways to find about it when it happens (assuming of course it happens when they're not logged on)?

[Delirium]

Thing is, John, lag's usually not a problem with Ginka, it's a problem with routers or ISPs.

My connection has been borked for the last day or so, a tracert shows that I'm hitting a whopping 1023 ms (sometimes more) after the first hop, and it only gets worse from there.  Best it ever got was 923.

If it doesn't clear up by Sunday I'm going to be pissed.

[Fnord]

This has gotten worse for me yesterday/today. Permadeath rules and I love it, but not when the cause is lag.  :evil:

[Delirium]

It's pretty ridiculous for me.  Every action takes 2-3 seconds to scroll up onto the screen, and travelling anywhere is an exercise in patience, and I keep getting d/c'd.  But.. it's not ginka.  It's, apparently, my ISP - ever since the thunderstorm it's been like this, so hopefully they're fixing whatever got fried.

[Hymwen]

It has been unplayable for two days. This does not bode well!

[palomar]

I've gotten serious lag the past couple of days too. I usually have a fine connection to ginka.

[Zhaky]

:cry:  I keep getting disconnected, it is not fair. I didn't think a MUD required that much coonection...  :?

so does it always happen when there is a HRPT or whatever you experienced players call it?

[spawnloser]

Not completely unplayable...but there are times, like now, that I get lagged out, but I can get into the game...just to immediately lag back out. This seems to be a half hour out of ever three.

[Zhaky]

so you are saying that it might be over in 30 minutes?

[spawnloser]

(shrug)  Maybe?

[Anonymous]

:cry:  I keep getting disconnected, it is not fair. I didn't think a MUD required that much coonection...  :?

It doesn't.   diku doesn't have a high overhead (relative to computers nowadays) and 160 people connecting to a mud is not a lot of network traffic.

What's causing the lag is packetloss.  It could be a number of things in between ginka and us.  Misconfigured duplex settings on a router interface, wonky HA configuration.  Bad hardware, etc.

Best thing would be for us to determine the ISP whose router is the issue and then all of us open up trouble tickets with them.

[mansa]

I think it's because there's no Net Neutrality in America!!!  Now we have to pay more for our connections!

[Bebop]

Please never make Arm pay for play.  Not only do I think it would decrease players and up elitism some people just can not be paying and what if the prices keep going up.  Ten bucks might not seem like much when you're in High School and it's part of your allowance or whatever (no offense but seriously) But when you have kids or you are making it month by month an your internet connection already costs fifty bucks a month, you just can not afford it so some people would not be able to play.  Ten bucks a month isn't that more then like XBOX live or like close to the same price?  Anyway - please don't make Arm pay for play it wouldn't be the same.  Those that can donate should but yeah.

I think it's kinda clear some people *cough*Hymwen*cough* are worked up about this HRPT.

[LauraMars]

Please never make Arm pay for play.

The staff have stated repeatedly that they will never turn Armageddon into a pay-to-play.

In this very thread, even.

[Bebop]

Please never make Arm pay for play.

The staff have stated repeatedly that they will never turn Armageddon into a pay-to-play.

In this very thread, even.

I know - I still just had to add my own two cents.

[elvenchipmunk]

Edited because Laura can read my mind.