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My server sux!!!
http://www.classictw.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9324
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Author:  smthng [ Mon May 14, 2001 8:26 am ]
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I finished configuring my TWGS this weekend and decided to test it out a bit before opening it up. Good job too, because the performance sux in a major way. Any ideas at all would probably help me out because this makes no sense to me at all. This is a fairly long and technical post, so feel free to skip to the last paragraph for the short version.

I've been playing on a friend's system with about 6 other people. He has a decent (not spectacular) server, but his connection is fairly unstable. We all tend to get dropped about once an hour or so. I have several decent servers and a rock solid connection. So, I offer to set up TWGS on mine. I snag TWGS, register it with the Gold package and start reading docs and generally making a nuisance of myself here. :) After playing around with it for a couple of weeks, I finally decide to make a real server and open it up to everyone so we can get off that damned connection.

I decided to set up a server I wasn't using first... just an extra one I had sitting there handling my DNS (not a stressful job at all). A single Pentium II 400 with 256 megs of ram. Currently running Windows 2000 Server with service pack 1 and all the related hotfixes from the Windows Update. I set up two session in TWGS 1.01.45 (registered). One was hosting 4 nodes with 5000 sectors, the other was hosting 8 nodes with 20000 sectors. Both of them run both Gold aliens with no alien edits of any kind. The only configuration changes I've made that aren't stock are the number of sectors, enable gold features, set ship movement timing to zero and unlimitted turns. TWGS is running at high priority. Other than DNS, the server is doing nothing. No extra networking services installed. The drive system is all LVD SCSI 3 and the swap file is on a different disk than the OS, sized at 768 megs (minimum and maximum - if anyone wants to know the technical reasons for this and the performance gain, just ask... I won't bore everyone else just yet). :)

Everything is peachy keen so far. I log in as a basic user, wander around a little bit to make sure it all works, and I checked the game settings to make sure they both look like I think they should. Do a little bit of trading, shoot a few Ferengi, everything is okay. So, I then fire up TWX Proxy (this is on a separate workstation, not the server) and fire off the trading script. Hrm... it's running okay, but it's slow enough that I can read each of the actions. So, I fire up another workstation with TWX Proxy and start the ZTM script. Yet again... slow enough to read... easily. I check the server status and it's happly chirping along. Less than 10% processor usage. The harddrives are being used so lightly that I can't even get a measurement (MUCH less than 1% throughput). Memory usage is only about 100 megs (for OS, TWGS, DNS and the basic junk than W2K runs in the background). Swap file usage is at 2%. Hrm... maybe it's the network. 10/100 switch (a real switch with a 4 gb backplane, not a switching hub)... utilization is essentially zero. Checked TWGS and it reports on average about 800 BPS. Checked logs and status... nothing of note there. It's just friggin slow!

So, I decide to put it on a system with a bit more juice and see how it works there. Dual Pentium 3 600s, 1 gig of ram, also LVD SCSI drives. Win2k Professional with SP1 and all the fixins. Other than the processor usage dropping to about 2%, I get the exact same results with the exact same speed. What the halibut is up with that? I know TWGS *CAN* run faster, because from the office (on a T3) to my friend's system (cable - unknown speed) the thing runs so fast that can barely tell what it's doing, let alone read it. At least 10 times the speed of my servers on a 100 mb LAN.

So, I've got two relatively kick-ass servers that run TWGS like it was dipped in molasses. The stress on these servers is just about nothing, yet it still runs dog slow compared to several less powerful systems that a friend has. I can fire up Quake 3 in 1600x1400 resolution with 32 bit textures, full shading and high quality textures and the system doesn't slow down at all. The systems can TWGS with LOADS of resources to spare... so why aren't they doing it? Is there some setting I'm missing somewhere? Is there something wonky with TWGS on Win2k? Is there some goofy bandwidth throttle that I don't know about? In short... WTF?!?

Any ideas, assistance, etc. would be greatly appreciated.


--smthng

"All your planet are belong to us!"

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