Comments On Server Config

Guspaz · July 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">For 256kbit upstream</div> I'm trying to think up some good settings for a server that is on a 256kbit (upstream) connection. The settings here are for <b>10</b> players. Here's what I have so far, can anybody make any suggestions/comments? (Assume CPU is not an issue)

sv_allowdownload 0 // Can't have people sucking bandwidth
sv_maxrate 2800 // ~219kbit total here, a bit of buffer
sv_maxupdaterate 30 // This is half the default of 60. Should it be higher/lower for a maxrate of 2800?
sv_minrate 2500 // Just to stop cheaters.
mp_lowlag 1 // This is a CS var IIRC, does it work well (at all) in NS?

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

mp_lowlag doesn't do anything, but i'm glad someone has done their math..good job

The_MAzTer · July 2003

wondering who want to play with a rate of 2800

i cannt play with it. To laggy.

eaglec · July 2003

On a 10 player server hl should not need to excede that bitrate. The only lag will occour becuse that line is posibly condended at 20:1 or worse and the 256kbit bandwidth is not guaranteed. It may well drop to a quarter of that at times <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>
Now that dsl and broadband are becoming more popular the high contention ratios imposed by most ISPs are become a problem for things like this.
I have had (a long time ago) 16 hldm players on my 256 line all with sub 100 pings including me from a freinds house with no noticible lag using a dynamic rate pluggin. I also had a few days after awful choke on the same settings with only 8 players.
I have given up running servers on my dsl, especially since I'm a member of Roob's team now and we have a brand spanking new server being delivered today <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The MAzTER @ Jul 10 2003, 04:15 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> wondering who want to play with a rate of 2800

i cannt play with it. To laggy.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
most players don't notice half the time except in a full server battle but even then the CPU chokes just as much as the bandwidth

saubloed · July 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Guspaz @ Jul 10 2003, 04:32 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> sv_allowdownload 0 // Can't have people sucking bandwidth
sv_maxrate 2800 // ~219kbit total here, a bit of buffer
sv_maxupdaterate 30 // This is half the default of 60. Should it be higher/lower for a maxrate of 2800?
sv_minrate 2500 // Just to stop cheaters.
mp_lowlag 1 // This is a CS var IIRC, does it work well (at all) in NS? </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
If you set allowdownload to 0 you should also set allowupload to 0 (e.g. to disable spraylogos uploads).
sv_maxrate should be normally 10000 and 2800 can only be a joke.
sv_maxupdaterate is also 30 at my server and it should be the default because i have not changed it.
sv_minrate should be 0 <span style='color:white'>***Nuked.***</span>
mp_lowlag is not a NS Cvar - just enter it intow your rcon console and nothing will return.

eaglec · July 2003

I think thats a little misleading:-
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If you set allowdownload to 0 you should also set allowupload to 0 (e.g. to disable spraylogos uploads).
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>Good point
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If you set allowdownload to 0 you should also set allowupload to 0 (e.g. to disable spraylogos uploads).
sv_maxrate should be normally 10000 and 2800 can only be a joke.
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>Untrue, sv_maxrate is there for a reason and 2800 is ok for a small server 10000 is the maximum and only for competition standard and LAN. If you haven't got the bandwidth then you should not use 10000, but we all know this dont we <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'>
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>sv_minrate should be 0 (lol - everyone calls everybody cheater and you probably dont know what cheating is).</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I dont know about "cheating and sv_minrate" but I guess you dont either, perhaps someone can enlighten both of us. Setting a minrate kind of makes sense but may enforce lag or higher pings on your connection. Trial and error might be the best option.

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (saubloed @ Jul 10 2003, 11:45 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> sv_maxrate should be normally 10000 and 2800 can only be a joke.
sv_minrate should be 0 (lol - everyone calls everybody cheater and you probably dont know what cheating is).
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Incase you missed it, there is a post by MonsE paraphrased: If you don't have anything nice to say, keep your trap shut.

<span style='color:white'>***Nuked.*** Threatening other members is bad, OK?</span>

Sv_maxrate 10000 = 10KB/s per player. 7500 is usually adiqute but on cable/dsl servers 2800-5000 are usually the most common and practical. smaller servers dont' have 7v7 battles..its USUALLY 3v4 ro 2v2 at a time or at diff locations on the server. maxrate is just the MAXIMUM (notice how the word starts with max?) meaning half the time the players do not consume all 10KBs or even 2800. Logically, you can set sv_maxrate 5000 (which is over yourlimit) but inorder for this to work you will need to be able to use packet manipulation and queing on your DSL router otherwise you will overflow your DSL's buffer and cause a HUGE lag spike for everyone. I have yet to experiment and utilize this so i cannot provide you with a howto. minrate is used to lagout 56K players. I have yet to find a use for it but maybe someone has a better explination for us.

Guspaz · July 2003

The reason that you set an sv_minrate is so that clients don't set their rate to 500 (the lowest allowed by sv_minrate 0). That's 500 BYTES PER SECOND. Why would someone do this on purpose? Why, to make themselves lag of course. Because if they're warping around, they're MUCH harder to hit.

Moving on, what I'm most interested is if the sv_maxupdaterate is good for this particular sv_maxrate. The sv_maxrate won't change (much), due to the connection being a fixed quantity, however the sv_maxupdaterate may need to be tweaked. Anybody have any comments on it? Should it be lowered for sv_maxrate 2800? Maybe sv_maxupdaterate 20?

eaglec · July 2003

tbh - I really dont think lag can be effectively used as a cheat. I am pretty sure it would not give an advantage as the lagger would find it equaly hard - if not harder to hit any of the other players.

<b>sv_maxupdaterate :</b> set the maximum number of times per second to update clients
<a href='http://half-life.gamehelp.com/console/server.html' target='_blank'>http://half-life.gamehelp.com/console/server.html</a>

So yeah, I guess if you reduce the maximum ammount of data you should reduce the ammount of fps the client should expect. I think dropping it as low as 20 might be bad though.

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

thanks for the great replies...i hope this info helped the thread starter

MasterShake · July 2003

Weren't sv_minrate and sv_maxrate in bits last time I checked? In that case, 500 bits would be more like 63 bytes a second, which is beyond laughable.

Lightning_Blue · July 2003

Actually, it's helped me too.

I have an 8 person sven server running on a 256K connection with sv_maxrate set at 3500. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/nerd.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd.gif'>

I'll look into those other varibles too. Thanks <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif'>

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (MasterShake @ Jul 10 2003, 11:25 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Weren't sv_minrate and sv_maxrate in bits last time I checked? In that case, 500 bits would be more like 63 bytes a second, which is beyond laughable.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
it was my understanding that sv_maxrate = KB/s*100

but i maybewrong

saubloed · July 2003

<span style='color:white'>***Nuked.***</span>

Guspaz · July 2003

I'm most interested in sv_maxupdaterate as this is the setting that determines how much the server tries to send down it's pipe (which is defined by sv_maxrate).

eaglec, no, sv_maxupdaterate does not affect the number of frames per second that the client sees. It would instead affect the smoothness of gameplay. Half-Life will interpolate between updates, the question is how much interpolation can you get away with?

What I mean is, if you have sv_maxupdaterate 20, and a client has an FPS of 100, then they're getting new data every five frames... So all the frames between updates are "guessed" by the client. So, at what level do errors or visual glitches begin creeping in? That's the big question.

cracker_jackmac · July 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>What I mean is, if you have sv_maxupdaterate 20, and a client has an FPS of 100, then they're getting new data every five frames... So all the frames between updates are "guessed" by the client. So, at what level do errors or visual glitches begin creeping in? That's the big question.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

Hrm, thats a good question. But we need more of a pro on the HL engine code to make more sense of that instead of us newbies <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

Guspaz · July 2003

A bit of experimentation over the last few days has gotten some hard results.

The server is currently using a maxrate of 2500 to improve the buffer (between what we use and what the line is rated at).

We're currently running with an sv_maxupdaterate of 20, and it still uses too much bandwidth, IE there is still quite high choke. Looks like we might have to decrease the update rate to 10 or 15... Though perhaps a combo of trying an updaterate of 15 and an increased maxrate of 2800 might help.