Anybody know the best way to increase server speed?

[shujuju]

I have a couple of friends that I bought Dont Starve, the DLC and Dont starve together for so that we could play together, but now that we have actually started playing we have had huge issues getting good connection! I know that the servers are run from the hosts computer and that it depends on their computer and internet speed, all of us have decent internet but we live very far away from each other, one of them is in Alaska, I am in Alberta Canada and another is in Tennessee. This makes connection really bad, so Ive looked for the best ways to increase the server speed as much as possible but I haven't been able to find much surprisingly!

The two things I tried from things I've found online to increase connection and speed was to change Don't Starve Together's priority in my task manager to "High" and go onto Steam and change the launch options to say "-tick_rate 60", I got my friends to do this as well, but it doesn't really seem to change much. None of us have any issues actually running the game, its just when we all connect together we get extreme lag that can prevent us from picking things up, from making torches/making fires and even from moving for a good minute or so.

Ive done as much research and I can and I really am not sure what we can do to play together more, we have had some success playing, even with the extreme lag, but I would love it if we wouldn't glitch around the screen for a minute at a time while we play. I heard that port forwarding can make things run smoother but I have had issues with port forwarding in the past, anybody else have any other suggestions? Or will I just need to deal with the lag until hopefully some updates can come out to possibly make the connection better?

[Dreamscape18459]

Quick question: Doesn't a higher tickrate mean the server communicates with clients more frequently? I think the higher tick rate is only noticeable if you have a good internet; if your friends are having issues a lower tick rate might be better.

Can you post some of your pc specs as well? They are fairly relevant in this situation. (CPU speed, cores/threads and RAM would be great. GPU as well but not as important.) Finally are you running caves? What world size and settings are you using?

I would also suggest having your friends host just to see if the game performs better between all of you. If one of them can host a world with no issues and you are all ok with them hosting you could do that. Users on this forum can hopefully help you with more information.

[Daniel86268]

Dreamscape is correct, the tick rate is the frequency with which the server communicates with the clients. So with a higher tickrate you are getting a slightly lower delay at the cost of a higher needed bandwidth. This isn't noticable and might even worsen the performance with bad connections. For example a tick rate of 30 (default) means the clients talk 30 times per second to the server. (tick rate 60 means 60 times per second, effectively doubling the needed bandwidth.) If no you might wanna lower the tickrate to 15 for example. On laggy connections you don't feel any higher dela, but you half the needed bandwidth for the game to run without having to wait for the packets to squeeze through your connection. If you have a second delay (for example) you won't notice the 1/15 second difference anyways, and it might reduce the ping to a playable delay.

If that doesn't help (or additionally as well) you can try to directly connect to the server instead of connecting over the server list. just open the console on a client in the main menu and enter "c_connect(<server ip>, <server port>, <password>)". This might help or affect nothing at all, but it's worth a try. (You can check if that made a difference by either just feeling or comparing the ping ingame by hitting backspace and observing the ping in the bottom right corner.)

Other than that you can't do much because the connection over a long distance with a bunch of switches/network nodes just takes some time and causes lag.

[shujuju]

32 minutes ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

Quick question: Doesn't a higher tickrate mean the server communicates with clients more frequently? I think the higher tick rate is only noticeable if you have a good internet; if your friends are having issues a lower tick rate might be better.

Can you post some of your pc specs as well? They are fairly relevant in this situation. (CPU speed, cores/threads and RAM would be great. GPU as well but not as important.) Finally are you running caves? What world size and settings are you using?

I would also suggest having your friends host just to see if the game performs better between all of you. If one of them can host a world with no issues and you are all ok with them hosting you could do that. Users on this forum can hopefully help you with more information.

7 minutes ago, Daniel86268 said:

Dreamscape is correct, the tick rate is the frequency with which the server communicates with the clients. So with a higher tickrate you are getting a slightly lower delay at the cost of a higher needed bandwidth. This isn't noticable and might even worsen the performance with bad connections. For example a tick rate of 30 (default) means the clients talk 30 times per second to the server. (tick rate 60 means 60 times per second, effectively doubling the needed bandwidth.) If no you might wanna lower the tickrate to 15 for example. On laggy connections you don't feel any higher dela, but you half the needed bandwidth for the game to run without having to wait for the packets to squeeze through your connection. If you have a second delay (for example) you won't notice the 1/15 second difference anyways, and it might reduce the ping to a playable delay.

If that doesn't help (or additionally as well) you can try to directly connect to the server instead of connecting over the server list. just open the console on a client in the main menu and enter "c_connect(<server ip>, <server port>, <password>)". This might help or affect nothing at all, but it's worth a try. (You can check if that made a difference by either just feeling or comparing the ping ingame by hitting backspace and observing the ping in the bottom right corner.)

Other than that you can't do much because the connection over a long distance with a bunch of switches/network nodes just takes some time and causes lag.

 

Ill definitely try lowering the tick rate to 15 then, I haven't actually touched the tickrate before so I wasn't sure exactly what it did and just followed what someone elses post told me, my internet is pretty decent but I am pretty sure taking up that extra bandwidth isnt helping me much haha.

I have had my friends host before and we seem to get the best luck when it is hosted in Tennessee even though it is still pretty laggy, but Ill post again after I try some of these things out.

I have a HP Laptop that is on wifi (which is also making the servers run slower but i cant really help that much), it has an HP Hexa-core 2.0 GHz speed and it has 12 GB of RAM, it is 64 bit and Im honestly not 100% sure how to find the GPU (didnt know what it was till I googled it) but I thinkkkk mine is an AMD Radeon R 5 Graphics Card if Im looking at the right thing. I cant get the specs of my friends computers but I know that theirs arent bad computers either.

Also Caves are not on, no, although it would be nice to turn them on in a world in the future if thats possible, and the world settings are default aside from more resources, less giants, long autumn etc. My friends havent played the game very much so its a decently easy world, but the size is at default and it isnt packed full of resources or animals or anything, its pretty average. Thanks for the help!

 

[Dreamscape18459]

How old is the laptop you are using? From the CPU it looks like an older machine. I'n guessing the CPU's cache is around 2 or 3 mb which would probably be the bottleneck of your machine. Aside from that detail it looks like you should be able to host a game. (Especially without caves.)

Did lowering the tick rate make the game playable for you? I would suggest verifying the integrity of the game cache through steam and defragmenting your hard drive to see if it increases performance. (Don't do this if you are using a solid state drive, judging from the other components I don't think you have one but I do not know.) There are also some mods on the workshop that can improve performance but they seem to be geared for servers that lasts 1000+ days; if you are having performance issues on fresh worlds I don't think these would help you.

Another thing I would suggest is making sure your laptop is properly cooled when hosting a world. I've done maintenance on some older HP laptops (On some 2010-2011 models.) and they only had a single vent on the side for exhausting air and one underneath for intake (Which due to the design of some of their laptops can prevent air entering entirely) . Having an external fan blowing over the laptop might help if heat is an issue. (The CPU is purposely throttled if it cannot cool properly/becomes too hot to prevent damage to the machine and HP laptops do not have good cooling compared to other manufacturers.) I would suggest elevating the laptop (if you have not already) to ensure the intake is not is not blocked. If heat is an issue with the laptop helping it get better airflow should improve performance immensely.

For RAM you should have more than enough. Generally adding some additional RAM can improve performance but I don't think it would so for you.

If you have a GPU then the game should run much better; DST isn't as graphically demanding as some games but enabling small textures/playing at a lower resolution than your desktop might improve performance.

[cezarica]

If the CPU is huffing and puffing with 30 tick rate you think it's a good idea to increase it to 60? By my logic this means the server and client would communicate 60 times in 1 second, basically using double the CPU power.

8GB of RAM server side is more than enough. Doesn't hurt if you got more but doubt helps a lot. The CPU power is the bottleneck for the DST server if you ask me.

Edit: Oh, and default tick rate is 15, not 30.

[brbrmensch]

you are all on the same continent, what high ping you are talking about? make sure host is somewhat between 2 others and have decent cpu

[Daniel86268]

On 25.9.2017 at 9:30 AM, cezarica said:

If the CPU is huffing and puffing with 30 tick rate you think it's a good idea to increase it to 60? By my logic this means the server and client would communicate 60 times in 1 second, basically using double the CPU power.

8GB of RAM server side is more than enough. Doesn't hurt if you got more but doubt helps a lot. The CPU power is the bottleneck for the DST server if you ask me.

Edit: Oh, and default tick rate is 15, not 30.

Ah, yea, sorry, my bad. I had the numbers from the wiki in the back of my head, which says default is 30, even though the actual default tick rate (at least on dedicated servers) is 15.

[shujuju]

On 9/24/2017 at 7:44 PM, Dreamscape18459 said:

How old is the laptop you are using? From the CPU it looks like an older machine. I'n guessing the CPU's cache is around 2 or 3 mb which would probably be the bottleneck of your machine. Aside from that detail it looks like you should be able to host a game. (Especially without caves.)

Did lowering the tick rate make the game playable for you? I would suggest verifying the integrity of the game cache through steam and defragmenting your hard drive to see if it increases performance. (Don't do this if you are using a solid state drive, judging from the other components I don't think you have one but I do not know.) There are also some mods on the workshop that can improve performance but they seem to be geared for servers that lasts 1000+ days; if you are having performance issues on fresh worlds I don't think these would help you.

Another thing I would suggest is making sure your laptop is properly cooled when hosting a world. I've done maintenance on some older HP laptops (On some 2010-2011 models.) and they only had a single vent on the side for exhausting air and one underneath for intake (Which due to the design of some of their laptops can prevent air entering entirely) . Having an external fan blowing over the laptop might help if heat is an issue. (The CPU is purposely throttled if it cannot cool properly/becomes too hot to prevent damage to the machine and HP laptops do not have good cooling compared to other manufacturers.) I would suggest elevating the laptop (if you have not already) to ensure the intake is not is not blocked. If heat is an issue with the laptop helping it get better airflow should improve performance immensely.

For RAM you should have more than enough. Generally adding some additional RAM can improve performance but I don't think it would so for you.

If you have a GPU then the game should run much better; DST isn't as graphically demanding as some games but enabling small textures/playing at a lower resolution than your desktop might improve performance.

So we played a bit but we are still having trouble, we arent seeing the broken connection thing in the corner CONSTANTLY anymore which is nice, but there is still huge lag spikes whenever either the host or a user is near enemies. Its running somewhat better after I checked the game cache and changed the tick rate but its still not doing fantastic and im not sure how to improve it any further if possible, the main issue now is the lag spikes as they prevent the players from walking and making fires and torches and stuff, and end up leading to the death of a player quite often ; v ;