Lag Feedback

[Dave]

If you notice any lag, stuttering, rubberbanding, etc. on the NS2 server, please feel free to report it here.

Be sure to include the following:
- Date and time when the lag occurred
- Number of players on the server
- The approximate round time

Thanks!

[JackCnKing]

Roger.

[Dave]

We've been noticing server FPS drops since the last NS2 patch. If anyone sees anything, please let us know in this thread or via a PM. Try to include details, such as the time it occurred, how far into the round you were, how long the server had been on the map, whether or not there were an abundance of structures (turrets, etc), the number of players connected, etc.

You can type net_stats in console to see the server fps.

Thanks.

[Christian]

We've been noticing server FPS drops since the last NS2 patch. If anyone sees anything, please let us know in this thread or via a PM. Try to include details, such as the time it occurred, how far into the round you were, how long the server had been on the map, whether or not there were an abundance of structures (turrets, etc), the number of players connected, etc.

You can type net_stats in console to see the server fps.

Thanks.

hey dave I got a demo when there was a huge lag spike while i was spectating a sniper. is that of any use to you?

[Dave]

Sorry, this is for the NS2 server.

[Christian]

Sorry, this is for the NS2 server.

oh right didnt see that.

[Roflcopter]

Getting some serious lag lately since build 250 when the server is full, performance drops to 40-50% and at times as low as 22%

[Dave]

Getting some serious lag lately since build 250 when the server is full, performance drops to 40-50% and at times as low as 22%

How built-up was the map? You'll likely see lag late-game when there's too many structures around.

[Roflcopter]

Full 20/19 players, but even at the start of a round it would be lagging moderately bad, does the server get reset 1-2 times a day? seems like ns2 has a memory leak atm

PS: Why are there so many verifications for making a post, makes it ridiculously annoying to post in these forums.

[Dave]

I've restarted the ns2 server and made a tweak. Let me know if you get any more lag spikes.

[Plasma]

PS: Why are there so many verifications for making a post, makes it ridiculously annoying to post in these forums.

Sorry about the verifications I don't like them either, but otherwise we're hit pretty badly by spam bots, and I have to change the registration questions every week. After a few posts on the forums, you won't need to verify again. (Default is 5 posts, so you should be fine now.)

[Spiritwind]

Been getting some lag the last couple days, mainly starting after 15 minutes of round time; and increases as the round time increases.

Lag started at 15 minutes, grew very bad (Nearly unplayable) at around 25 minutes.

[Plasma]

I've removed the thread you created about this issue Spiritwind since you hadn't seen this sticky
--
Yes, the problem is unfortunately NS2 doesn't work well with VDS, which is a real shame. Nevertheless, this is not acceptable, and I'll try to find a way to improve performance especially as games drag on. I'm not happy with the current performance, and I don't want to add Donor benefits until that's taken care of.
--
I'll keep you guys updated.

[Spiritwind]

Alright, as I said before, I'm not familiar with Natural Selection 2 Servers, but I run quite a few servers in other games. 

Is your vds running under linux or windows?  Since I see quite a few servers that lag, I'm going to also assume NS2 is single threaded on the server side.  Have you tried dedicating each server to a certain thread or core on the processor?  NS2 and TF2 isn't very ram extensive, so its probably not a problem in that area.  I would check the ghost processes on the server, clear out as much as you can without removing essential things. 

I *could* see if I have enough room on my VDS to support your NS2 server, however the only problem with that is the time it'd take to make it so that you guys only had access to the ftp for that - and ssh commands that are only needed for the NS2 server.  If you want to talk more about this route, send me a pm.

[Plasma]

Thanks for the offer, but I do not wish to borrow or rent another server.
--
NS2 does not officially support Linux yet. I believe the devs are working on it right now.
NS2 is not currently optimized to use multiple cores. It's still recommended to use 2 threads, but one handles most of the work. The problem isn't RAM related, it's simply processing power. I think I mentioned it in one other thread here, the one about opening a 2nd server potentially.

NS2 doesn't work well on VDS because the most important part to keep a good 30 tick rate is the processors. Good gaming server hosts use basically consumer grade hardware like i5/i7 cores overclocked to 4GHz for 20 players. If you need more slots, then you have to bump it up to at least 4.4GHz, and that's just silly and way too costly. A VDS will never get that processing power by design. Only way I can think of right now, would be to get a dedicated machine and even then, pay extra for the processing power required above.
--
The way I can think of would be to rent a separate NS2 server which would cost around $50 a month on top of our current costs. OR, we decrease down to 18 slots and look at our tick rate.
Either way, I need time to think about it.