"Lag Monster Kills All"

[KillerBeeZ]

"Lag Monster Kills All"

Most of the time I post in the Script support section, so I feel a bit strange posting here.

I am generally very good with computers. I can fix most problems, tweek it so its damn fast, secure it so noone can access it... but recently I've had a problem with lag. I believe it is the connection somewhere. Those on my network can play with no lag at all, but those outside the network are getting so much lag that they often die because of it. Some players wont fight now either. I fear if it doesnt stop, my shard is ruined.

At 1st, I figured I was screwed because of my cable upload cap, but, I have a 256kbit upload cap and I've heard people with dial up can run a server with 10 or more people. 256 is about 4 times that speed so in theory I should be able to support about 40 people (as long as all 40 are not hanging out at brit bank)

Plus I've had more people online before the lag started with no problems and there can be lag with only 1 or 2 people.

With this in mind I investigated for any possible attacks. The lag started the day after I banned someone, so it led me to believe that maybe they were DoSing the server. But I asked players in the game to let me know when they are lagging bad then I ran a netstat and only saw those who were on at that time, no other connections to the computer.

Can someone hide from netstat? if so, what can detect them?
Does it sound like a hacker? or maybe there is someone using a bad 3rd party program? Do you think it could be a bad script?

Some info about the lag:

Its not all the time, it comes in spurts.
Sometimes there is no lag for hours, sometimes the lag spikes are seconds apart.

1 thing I noticed one day was that it was 3 pm, and a bunch of players were getting out of school, and all of a sudden it starts. One of the people I banned (the one right before the lag began) goes to school.

1 more thing, I saw this in the console a bit ago and was wondering what it was. I never saw it before. Is this related?

Client: 195.177.***.***: Sent ingame packet (0xD7) before having been attached to a mobile

Thank you for taking the time to help,
I am open to ideas and suggestions on how to solve this issue.

 

[bleis]

I can help you with the packet send before attacment thing, as I have seen that a lot of time monitoring my server, it seems like( any one correct me if I´m wrong) that this will occour when the server and a client are out of syncro and either the player or Razor ect. sends a packet before the server realises its login propper...But as I said I have seen it lots of time. I have also seen while my ip sup, was monitoring my connetion, to stop some hackers I had, so I´m pretty sure it aint a hacker thing or brute force thing, as they would have reported it to me then.

Have you tried to messure your upload rate, when it goes on ?? What I mean is the the ip sup is not alwas giving you the bandwith you are promised.

Do you have a lot of login at the time you get the lag ?

Do you have players macroing/crafting at the time ?

Can it be connected with Ram not beeing flushed ?

Do you ever restart the server ?

What windows platform do you use ?

Are you connected to SETI ?

 

[shadeuo]

well heres one i had about 5 months ago server was laggin real bad so i rebooted thinking it must be me. server started fine 5 or so people loged in still fine then all the sudden there it was again so i checked the councel and seen who just logged in. ok now i know who is causing it but why? so i tele to him (took a good 30 seconds) then as i arrive i see a bog thing and a huge amount of boglings it spawned. with him being acrossed the river from it he was shooting it with a bow and spawning all kinds of boglings and they were just building up. well needless to say player range dont work if you spawn all that right in front of you. so with that said i have never added a bogthing to my server again maybe try and check who is logging at the time of lag starting and see if they are triggering it.

 

[KillerBeeZ]

Have you tried to messure your upload rate, when it goes on ?? What I mean is the the ip sup is not alwas giving you the bandwith you are promised.

yes and sort of, I have monitored it, but it seems its not a constant. It goes from 100 to 160 or so, never seen the 256 yet but thats still a good bit of bandwidth when the most I've had on at one time was 10 people

Do you have a lot of login at the time you get the lag ?

sometimes yes sometimes no. Players have seen the lag even if noone has logged on in a while

Do you have players macroing/crafting at the time ?

yes, but they did this before the lag started.

Can it be connected with Ram not beeing flushed ?, Do you ever restart the server ?

I restart the server on occassion, but the lag is still there afterwords.

What windows platform do you use ?

I have tried this with 2 computers so far, the 1st with 2k pro, and now with xp home

Are you connected to SETI ?

not when I run the server, besides even if I had another computer in the house running it, it sends 340k about once every 8 hours.



shadeuo, I don't believe its a mobile issue. The server its on is a 2.4 GHz PIV with 512 MB DDR 266, so far there are 11,800 mobiles and a little over 115k items in the world. With the way it sits, I could spawn about 40k mobiles before I'd start to overload the server itself.

Indeed, everyone would be having a great time with no lag at all if they were all on the network here so it is likely not the server.

Now, what would do it in this case is sending the data to the player for all these mobiles ands it makes me sick because I have a feeling I can do nothing about it. It may well be the fact that I need more than my little 256k cap on upload, and since the shard is all free, its not likely I'll get a better connection anytime soon. I'ts hard to get people to pay for what they get for free

I will continue to look into it and let you know what I find.

I will also look into finding the mobiles that are not attatched to anything, just in case.