Australian local NS2 server
kabab
Join Date: 2003-12-15 Member: 24384Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-12-15 Member: 24384Members, Constellation
Since Endar had to take down his awesome servers :( i've rented a Hypernia server for a month i'm not sure how the performance is but none the less at least its local...
If anyone wants to chip in some $$$ please let me know depending on how much $$ we can come up with i can extend the server rental.. First months on me :)
If anyone wants to chip in some $$$ please let me know depending on how much $$ we can come up with i can extend the server rental.. First months on me :)
Comments
It doesn't seem like enough grunt for NS2 :(
Server code needs more optimisation!
For reference, Aus Pure was a 2600k overclocked so renting a top end server might be good enough for 14 or 16 slots? I've looked at a <a href="http://www.ozservers.com.au/" target="_blank">few</a> <a href="http://www.fluccsdedicated.com.au/dedicated-servers/dedicated-servers-australia.shtml" target="_blank">dedicated</a> <a href="http://www.serversaustralia.com.au/starter-dedicated-servers.php" target="_blank">hosting</a> <a href="http://www.dedicatedservers.net.au/" target="_blank">companies</a>. Often even their top end servers seem to be older xeons. I don't know whether xeon architecture is better or worse for NS2, or how much clock rate matters (probably a lot). I can't see much info in the dedicated server thread but it might be worth asking there.
The other challenge is finding a plan which provides sufficient quota - the servers will use about 1GB/hr for just 12 players. So if the Aus Pure servers were running for 10 hours per day with 18 people we're talking north of 500GB/month after factoring in weekends. You can host multiple servers on one physical box (N-1 cores) so that's a positive.
Looks like being $300+/month. As elodea said in the other thread, UWE really needs to do some work on server optimisation before NS2 goes more mainstream.
NS2 server needs to really improve its going to be a major problem soon...
A future I see would be an NBN connection, speeds of either 25/5 or 50/20 coming in at a price point of around $100 per month. Surely within the Australian community someone lives in one of the first release sites!
I don't see a point in developing anything else in this game until the servers are fixed, there is no way they can release it the way it is now they may sell a bunch of copies but there will be absolutely no server capacity..
I'm vaguely aware that NS's architecture might be quite different to many other FPS games. It's server based whereas other FPS can be more peer-to-peer, so what you said above might be like comparing apples to oranges. I read about this in a thread on the forums where they were talking about latency and how the server needs to confirm hit calculations and you can get a death animation quite a long time after something has actually died... As for why it's designed this way, I couldn't say.
This is all fine, but at the end of the day we need affordable, mainstream server options.. apples, oranges, bananas or pineapples.
Well said.
I hope it gets optimized soon.....
Oh absolutely. There is a serious problem here. I wasn't trying to make excuses, just pointing out that it might not be reasonable to make a set of expectations based on what happens in another game. Buying hosting from somewhere like hypernia off-the-shelf is a perfectly reasonable expectation.
Second time I heard this, but NS2 uses the good ol' Client-Server-Client architecture that has been around since Quake1, and which is in use by most of the popular games today (all Source-based games, all UT-based games, and I do believe Battlefield 3 as well). Is it not still the Lua-scripts that are to blame for performance? Not so much the netcode (although I learned when improvising that wall-hack, that Spark does send A LOT more information than it has to strictly speaking).
3FL are looking at getting some NS2 servers up. There is currently a thread in the 3FL forums - <a href="http://www.3fl.net.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7360" target="_blank">http://www.3fl.net.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7360</a>
The more demand there is for NS2 servers then hopefully the faster they go up.
Yeah 3FL is usually pretty good with hosting servers, although it does make a huge difference if the admins are playing the game, which I doubt any of them are, so from now the server has been a no show :9
I agree that this is not something that a normal hosting company would do, but then again the company that I run is built off this very idea (providing overclocked hardware for NS2). Not that this helps out the Aussie community at all, but it just goes to show that where there is a will there is a way.
I'm still searching for datacentres that might allow me to co locate an overclocked computer and not ask an arm and a leg for bandwith which seems to be the issue. If anyone knows of anywhere that would be able to accomodate me in NZ or Aus then get in contact.
Currently hoping a comapny I deal with at work will let me test their new datacentres connection for them as they wait for clients :)
Also pricing up an internet connection into my datacentre at work but data caps are a major barrier (I'm an IT systems engineer by trade)
In regards to 3FL i believe they rent Hypernia game servers which are all virtual boxes in austrailia or dedicated server hardware out of singapore. Neither will be good enough for NS2.
If server performance is not drastically reduced in regards to single core speed the situation for Aus/NZ is very bleak for the foreseeable future. Would love to have some UWE feedback on this and possibly work to find a temporary solution.
iinet are the same, even though the ping is good to their new VPN servers, but with it being on a shared server, again same problem, performance just explodes.
I'm still searching for datacentres that might allow me to co locate an overclocked computer and not ask an arm and a leg for bandwith which seems to be the issue. If anyone knows of anywhere that would be able to accomodate me in NZ or Aus then get in contact.
Currently hoping a comapny I deal with at work will let me test their new datacentres connection for them as they wait for clients :)
Also pricing up an internet connection into my datacentre at work but data caps are a major barrier (I'm an IT systems engineer by trade)
In regards to 3FL i believe they rent Hypernia game servers which are all virtual boxes in austrailia or dedicated server hardware out of singapore. Neither will be good enough for NS2.
If server performance is not drastically reduced in regards to single core speed the situation for Aus/NZ is very bleak for the foreseeable future. Would love to have some UWE feedback on this and possibly work to find a temporary solution.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Telstra cable? If so great ping for me! :D
Yes TelstraClear cable
iinet are the same, even though the ping is good to their new VPN servers, but with it being on a shared server, again same problem, performance just explodes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This may change. They should be assessing what they will need and running some tests hopefully in the next few days
I'm willing to contribute $50-100 a month to whoever runs a server. Offered donations to endar before but he told me he was uber rich :p
I'm willing to contribute $50-100 a month to whoever runs a server. Offered donations to endar before but he told me he was uber rich :p<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like internode will be running servers hopefully. If that doesn't work out, there's always this:
<a href="http://goo.gl/KLb11" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/KLb11</a>
Will commit for 12 months @ 50, 6 at 100