[eepro100] Buffers ? Small Packets ?

[m@rcel.to]

Hi Nate !

Hmm, I've also heard from this bug but couldn't get that specific
problem on my systems. 

For example:

I've got one machine, running ONE public UT Server with 16 Playerslots,
all are full, the pings are 'roundabout 30-40 for most of the players,
this runs good, everything ok so far. 
I install another 16Player public UT Server on the same machine, still
everything is fine, the pings are around 30-40, no problems, I then
install the third 16 Player public Server on the same machine, and now
all pings rise to about 50-60ms, though the cpu and ram utilitzation is
still very (!) low, about 10% CPU and about 30% used RAM, so nothing to
worry about. 
I install another Server on the machine, all the pings rise again to
about 80-100ms and now these "ping jumps" happen, but only if all the
servers are full, means there a many players connected. Keeping in mind
that the cpu is about 35% now and RAM is about 70% everything SHOULD run
fine, since there's no peak which hits any border or so, so there's no
reason for any kind of jump or rise in the ping..

Strange things there.. these "jumps" are most confusing, the pings jumps
from 40 to 200, and 3 seconds later again back to 40... then it works
awhile, 5 min later again some quick jumps.. and gone again.. seems that
the more players are connected, the more problems I've got. At first I
thought that must be something with the CPU or the RAM, but there is
definately no problem.

And the other strange thing is, that it happens with all kind of
*game*server, the more players are connected, the more small udp packets
are transmitted and received, the more problems i've get.. 

Maybe Donald, who has much more knowledge about all of this stuff has an
idea.. I though about lowering the MTU or so, or increasing the buffers
for the card.. just need to know where to start...

Bye

Marcel

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: eepro100-admin@scyld.com [mailto:eepro100-admin@scyld.com] Im
Auftrag von Nate Amsden
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 15. November 2001 02:06
An: eepro100@scyld.com
Betreff: Re: [eepro100] Buffers ? Small Packets ?


m@rcel.to wrote:
> 
> Hi !
> 
> We have serveral gameservers running on one 1,4GHz Athlon and 1,5GB
> RAM using an Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 with the stock Red Hat 7.1 
> driver under 2.2.19 and 2.4.13, while the CPU and RAM usage stays 
> quite calm and down the NIC seems to get to its limits when running 
> about 4 x 16 Playerslots UT (Unreal Tournament) or Half Life Servers.

while i can't speak for half life, i know UT has a known bug with large
numbers of players. the longer they play the more lagged everyone gets.
its been a bug for a long time a year or more. it can occur on win2000
systems and linux.  i used to participate in the UT newsgroup from loki
and it was a very common problem. there was never any really good
solution. there was some workarounds(i think the README file may mention
1 or 2). if your experiencing that problem it not related to the NIC
itself but the TCP stack of the OS or the game. not sure about halflife
since theres no linux native client ive never played it. i havent
experienced it myself but theres rarely more then 2 or 3 people on my UT
servers(my servers are not advertised on the masters)

dig through the newsgroup archives for that newsgroup(if there are any)
you may find some possible fixes.

sounds to me thats the problem your having. ive seen those symtoms
reported quite a bit ..dont think its the NIC ..

good luck ..

nate

-- 
Nate Amsden
System Administrator
GraphOn
http://www.graphon.com _______________________________________________
eepro100 mailing list
eepro100@scyld.com http://www.scyld.com/mailman/listinfo/eepro100