Network Lag

[Rylo]

I am experiencing network lag times whenever connected to my dedicated server, located on the same LAN.  I feel the culprit may be the 5400 RPM used laptop hard drive I have put in the server.  The server is a 2012 Hyper-V, with a VM running Ubuntu Server 14.04 with DST on it. Now keep in mind this server also runs a lightweight Ubiquiti Unifi Wireless Controller on Ubuntu 14.10 Desktop and PLEX on Linux MINT. It has 2  Xeon 5520s and I have given the DST server 4 threads of the 16 (Basically a Dual Core 2.26Ghz with Hyperthreading).  It has 2 x Gigabit NICs and right now the DST Server has its own. Now if the other servers are pretty much idle I get the same results. I think it may be due to the fact that I put a 500GB 5400RPM used laptop hard drive in there that houses all of this.

 

I plan on upgrading to an SSD and SSHD (2 x 2.5" hard drive slots only).  And I feel this is my bottleneck in the network performance maybe.

 

Any thoughts as to some other options that may be causing this lag?

 

[rezecib]

@Rylo, The bottleneck for DST is generally single-core speed (in your case, 2.26 GHz), since all of the game simulation runs on a single thread. There are some options now for threaded rendering (not applicable to dedicated servers because they don't render) and threaded physics, which can pull a little bit of load off of the main simulation thread, but unfortunately it's very difficult to parallelize the main simulation.

 

I imagine running it in a VM probably doesn't help, either, but I'm much less clear on the performance implications of that.

[Rylo]

@rezecib, Thats a shame about the single core capabilities. When running into the lag issues I get the network disconnect icon.  My cpus are not being taxed though.  I will update my findings when I get the new hard drives.  You are very helpful on this forum rez, I do appreciate your input. I was going to attah a screener but I see we can only reference URL images.  Out of the 4 cpus in the linux top process, I never reach above 30% on one.  With my new drives I will be going to a VMware envrionment seeing the Server 2012 Core has been rather annoying to manage headless.

 

I ran the perf report command mentioned in another thread and looks like it was using 66% at its peak.

[rezecib]

@Rylo, Hmm, okay. You may be dealing with hairpin NAT problems-- you could test that out by seeing if people connecting from outside of your LAN also experience the lag issue. Sometimes the game fails to connect directly to computers on the same network, and I'm told it falls back on a proxy in that case. Sometimes switching the server filter to LAN only seems to fix it for people, but otherwise you can look into the various solutions people have used for hairpin NAT.

[Shequan]

I have a fast internet 200Mb down 20Mb up w/ an aging but fairly powerful mac (2x 3GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon w/ 12 GB RAM, combined 2.5G VRAM, and solid state hard drives). I've been hosting my own server of DST and it goes back and forth between ok host and bad host. I've got port forwarding setup on my Apple Router. 

 

Someone in my game today suggested I set the DST launch option through steam with the following:  

 

-threaded_renderw

 

I've been googling 'DST launch options' w/out much luck and found this thread. Does anyone know what the above command does or have any suggestions how how I can provide a more consistent host experience for people. The game runs great for me and my processors aren't working hard at all. I've verified I'm getting the intenet speeds mentioned above via speedof.me. Not sure what else I can do short of turning off mods (I love my mods: http://www.i-m.mx/bhelies/ShequanMods/mods.html).

[bizziboi]

@Shequan,

 

Note it's not a given that the threaded renderer will solve things for you, it really depends on where the problem lies (optimization is still ongoing though so things will improve)

 

But to use the threaded renderer:

 

- Right click the game in your Steam library.

- Select properties

- Click 'Set Launch options'

- Enter '-threaded_render' (without the quotes)

- Click 'Ok' and 'Close'

- Launch the game

 

 

[rezecib]

@Shequan, By the way, Global Positions has functional extended indicators for everyone (as well as global player icons, signal fires, and rudimentary map sharing).

[Shequan]

@bizziboi

 

I will give that a try to see if it helps and look forward to continued game optimization. Thanks for your reply!

 

@rezecib

 

Thanks for the suggestion I will check that mod out! Recently I've been inclined to turn off all ‘global positioning’ type mods for a more immersive experience. I setup pathway lights to guide new people to an initial base camp but encourage people to venture out and setup their own camps. The rule on my server is use any base you find/take what you need but don’t destroy existing bases. Recently I’ve been exploring my world to ‘discover’ these new bases and it’s extra rewarding because I don’t know in advance where they are. Very fun. 

 

lol/edit.. if either of you can share with me the proper syntax for tagging someone via '@' I'd appreciate it. For whatever neither of my @ comments above are highlighting in red. 

[rezecib]

@Shequan, You select a little bit of their text and buttons for it will pop up. You can also type the stuff that it pastes in manually, but that's the best way to find out how.

[Shequan]

@rezecib, thanks!