Mid/pryd - ToA Zones Lag "What you mean? - It is one server!" answer

Okay, i read the argument many times in varies threads by many albs (maybe hibs as well?) that Mid/Pryd whine about our ToA Zones are laggy is crap.

The argument they use is: "It is one server, it is the same for us all!" pointing to the idea we are just plain morrons who whine when we don't get everything served on a plate (we do, but i won't admit that ofc )

So i have some info on why it is NOT THE SAME for all 3 realms:

First argument in my string of arguments:

When Albion tried to Relic Raid us (Remember the raid that got spoiled due to first a weirdo hitted/killed some guards so we got reports, then server crash?) ToA zones never went down, it was the classical and SI zones that seemed effected, due to what i read here.
On http://www.camelot-europe.com they said it was just classical Midgaard zones that had went down, i have not investigated further, but my point is strong if it was _just_ mid-classical that went down anyway.

When a part of the server can crash (the midgaard classical / all classical-SI) while other part remains up, it indicates it is several small-servers, networked together to act as 1 server that runs the Prydwen Server, so that it can crash on small parts, also known as Zone-crashes in general.
(- I think someone called this running clusters, i can i get some more info from you "geeks" who know more than me? )

Second String:
The amouth of whine from Albs and Hibs on the forums are very low compared to the ones from Midgaard, and more mids seems to be quitting DIRECTLY due to the lag in Mid/pryd - ToA Zones than there are Albs and Hibs doing the same due to lag in their ToA-zones. (maybe not leaving, but they say they will (addicts!))

This lead to the thought to me that ToA is more laggy for Mid/Pryd than for the others, which is very possible when considering the zones being run on different machines (see Argument String 1)


Conclusion:

They cluster/mini-server that runs Mid/pryd's ToA Zone is somewhat unable to do it's job to a pleasureable level and ruins the game (ToA) for mid/pryd, the problem get's low priority, due to being on the Prydwen server, so while GOA have told they where aware of MID/PRYD having ToA Problems, they upgrades 3 (4?) other servers BEFORE they have even started to PLAN any actions for the Prydwen server (Well, they have not told us if they have, they just said they where going to upgrade rest of servers at somepoint, sounded to me like they hadn't planned on what they would upgrade them to)

I think this is very bad customer service and i'm part-glad i do not play much atm, due to my IRL life being very busy.

Over and out.

So basicly ... in that one post
- You call us geeks
- You call us addicts
- You call yourself someone who doesn't know as much as the next guy
- You call mids bigger whiners then albs and hibs

Well you made a lot of friends there didn't you?

Prydwen is made up of 5/6 PC's afaik Oo

Those who think that whole of DAOC is on 1 server have no idea how much it takes to be able to run a mmo. I will try and explain alittle


Every zone has it´s own server. By that I mean, classic, SI frontier zones and ToA. Dungeons are also on 1 server.

Those servers are connected to eachother as clusters. That´s the whole thing about porting. Did you think they did porting to different zones just for fun?

So what happens when 1 server crashes? Well that zone is unreachable but you can still play in all the other zones. Unless ofc the login server crashes because then u can´t login at all.

All these servers are connected to eachother via a quite advanced network. The servers should be capable of transmiting hundreds of thousands of packets every second. No way that just 1 server can handle that.

Unfortunatly GOA have no idea what it takes to run a mmo like this. They favor large scale battles but their servers can´t handle 200+ ppl in same zone.

I am to tired to type. I will try and explain the whole server build tomorrow if anyone wants to know.

As I understand it (and I'm not a network tech), the euro servers are actually several machines linked to form a SAN (storage area network). Different zones of the same 'server' are on different parts of the network. My guess is that the network between the gateway and the hard drive with the mid/pryd ToA zones on it may not be able to cope with the traffic or the actual machine serving the hard-drive itself may not be up to the task.
Although Mid/Pryd seems to be worst off, many Albs have encountered massive lag in ToA and frequent LDing, hence the belief by many that it's all the same thing. Chances are it is the same root cause however.

The severity of the lag problems on Prydwen/Mid may be hard to understand just by reading this forum, you have to experience it to know how bad it is..
Example, I ran with healer stuck on me to Halls of Ma'ati today from Stygia, the travelling without speed took around 4 times the normal amount because healer kept losing stick and what's more, we lost each other often because he could keep following lag ghost for even 1 minute (that was running different direction while I was happily running along, seeing him behind me..)

Even so, we were better off than the 2fg of level 50 Mids that were going for ML5 inside dungeon, 1.5fg of them got wiped by yellow-orange scorpions on the way, those 2 groups included 3 healers.

Sometimes you can get "response" to your actions in game right away (the rare case), like if you say something in chat, sometimes it takes up to 15 seconds, and mostly it takes around 5-10 seconds.
Apply this same thing for styling, casting, talking, inviting, slash commands, moving items in inventory, buying items, putting items to vault, and everything, you got pretty unplayable game there

I don't claim to know what it's like in Alb or Hib, but we probably would have bit more people on the barricades here if it was all ToA of Prydwen.

In this situation, I'd give my left arm to "only" to go Ld every 5 mins

re: 15s delay often - im not getting it so severe - but at some points i still get about 5-10s delay and its server lag, not my connection. i have yellow 'latency' lag at random points during the day, which stays from around 5 minutes to (personal best) 2 hours. hearing mids complain, i can only empathise with you.

Shanaia said:

So basicly ... in that one post
- You call us geeks
- You call us addicts
- You call yourself someone who doesn't know as much as the next guy
- You call mids bigger whiners then albs and hibs

Well you made a lot of friends there didn't you?

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I often reffer to myself as a computer-geek (being infront of a computer screen a 9-10 hours pr day in average make you realise that, so when i use the "geek" word, i don't mean something negative with it, sorry if i offended you.

I call you addicts, because we all are

Well, to the 3rd line:
"Everyone will be your superior on some field"

And did i call mids bigger whiners than albs and hibs? no, i think i didn't, i just argued that albs (and hibs?) have been trying to tell us that for a while and i think that is untrue, we just whine more atm due to bad ToA.

haarewin said:

re: 15s delay often - im not getting it so severe - but at some points i still get about 5-10s delay and its server lag, not my connection. i have yellow 'latency' lag at random points during the day, which stays from around 5 minutes to (personal best) 2 hours. hearing mids complain, i can only empathise with you.

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I get that too, but then i found out THAT was when my brother was downloading porno (or "Fun movies" according to him )

(Edit: I fell with you, just saw it looked like a "i don't care" kinda response, wasn't meant to be that, sorry)

xxManiacxx said:

I am to tired to type. I will try and explain the whole server build tomorrow if anyone wants to know.

Click to expand...

Please do so, i know so little about servers, would be fun to get some more knowledge on the field

(The above arguments where almost 100% based on posts from others, thats how i learn stuff... and... )

Lol guys, your all so wrong! Remember we got an upgrade a few months ago so Prydwen is now run on a Nintendo 16bit and sorry midgard... your still on a floppydisc on excal (thats why excal has been so buggy too lately; a floppy cant really handle ToA zones).



(To be more serious; i havent had any lag at all since ToA but i really feel sorry for you guys who has... lag is a real killer in a mmorpg)

Iceforge said:

I get that too, but then i found out THAT was when my brother was downloading porno (or "Fun movies" according to him )

(Edit: I fell with you, just saw it looked like a "i don't care" kinda response, wasn't meant to be that, sorry)

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i used to get it when my brother is downloading crap / porn / whatever. now it happens when his pc is off

haarewin said:

i used to get it when my brother is downloading crap / porn / whatever. now it happens when his pc is off

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My brother turns off his PC-screen, used to fool me that way

Lakih said:

Lol guys, your all so wrong! Remember we got an upgrade a few months ago so Prydwen is now run on a Nintendo 16bit and sorry midgard... your still on a floppydisc on excal (thats why excal has been so buggy too lately; a floppy cant really handle ToA zones).



(To be more serious; i havent had any lag at all since ToA but i really feel sorry for you guys who has... lag is a real killer in a mmorpg)

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I'm jalous already.... no lag sounds like heaven..... now i just wish i had time to play...

Here is a pic of the Italian server "Argain" wich is a very little populated server from the italian-daoc.

http://www.daoc.it/get_image.php?id=2251&w=640&h=480&c=1


As u can see it consist of 11 Dell PowerEdge 2550/2560 servers http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_2650?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~tab=viewstab#tabtop (this link shows the 2650, wich is the next generation of the same servers the DAoC serverss are running on).

I asume that bigger servers like Excalibur have more "nodes" and consists of more servers due to the load the server needs to handle.

These servers are all in a giant multi-node cluster handling different zones/realms - running Red Hat Linux 7.5. When u zone (either with zoning or seamless) u move from one server to another, this so the server(s) can handle the load from a MMO-game. When an expancion as ToA is realeased the majority of the server population goes to one "node" (zone) making that server laggy and giving low performance to the customer/user. In the Mid-Pry-ToA- issue my guess the node wich is running the mid-toa zones (not dungeons) has some sort of hardware problem and GOA are having trouble resolving the issue. Tho were yet again let alone in the dark WITH NO INFO from GOA.

Here are some more pictures from the Itallian DAoC site:
http://www.daoc.it/hardware/

Prudil said:

... some stuff....[/url]

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Thx, great info, and very nice Italian DAoC post pictures of their own hardware

Yussef said:

Prydwen is made up of 5/6 PC's afaik Oo

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Such a liar, their made up of 'old style' Gameboys - with the server upgrade back in July 2003 they moved up to 'Colour Gameboy' - and with the recently server upgrades its GBA all the way (though I hear the german and french servers got GBA SP's )








This spam was brought to you by Archeon Incorperated, a subsiduary of GlumCo oil refinaries:
GlumCo - destroying the world for our childen

Just to try and illustrate even more and another "assumption" from my side
The attatched image shows (take out your magnifying glass now ) the lables on the servers, where they illustrate wich role they have in the "cluster".



Red: "some_zone(s)" - Albion
Blue: "some_zone(s)" - Midgard
Green: "some_zone(s)" - Hibernia

Im not 100% sure here, but just meant as an explanation

Archeon said:

Such a liar, their made up of 'old style' Gameboys - with the server upgrade back in July 2003 they moved up to 'Colour Gameboy' - and with the recently server upgrades its GBA all the way (though I hear the german and french servers got GBA SP's )

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I would like to retract this statement, it had not crossed my mind that the servers might have been made by Dell and as such my opinion about Gameboy servers might have been a little optimistic.

Eheh

Prudil said:

Here is a pic of the Italian server "Argain" wich is a very little populated server from the italian-daoc.

http://www.daoc.it/get_image.php?id=2251&w=640&h=480&c=1


As u can see it consist of 11 Dell PowerEdge 2550/2560 servers http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_2650?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~tab=viewstab#tabtop (this link shows the 2650, wich is the next generation of the same servers the DAoC serverss are running on).

I asume that bigger servers like Excalibur have more "nodes" and consists of more servers due to the load the server needs to handle.

These servers are all in a giant multi-node cluster handling different zones/realms - running Red Hat Linux 7.5. When u zone (either with zoning or seamless) u move from one server to another, this so the server(s) can handle the load from a MMO-game. When an expancion as ToA is realeased the majority of the server population goes to one "node" (zone) making that server laggy and giving low performance to the customer/user. In the Mid-Pry-ToA- issue my guess the node wich is running the mid-toa zones (not dungeons) has some sort of hardware problem and GOA are having trouble resolving the issue. Tho were yet again let alone in the dark WITH NO INFO from GOA.

Here are some more pictures from the Itallian DAoC site:
http://www.daoc.it/hardware/

Click to expand...

Quite strange tbh they seem exactly same pics published in USA to show off the power of the new Dell Cluster
U caught it aye?
On a side note btw, means nothing they clustered 11 2650 if they are all Mono Processor and with 2 GB Ram :O

I will try and explain a little how I think they have built their system.

First we have the login,server, character server ( i think it is 2-3 login servers). When server and character is selected you are moved to another server where your character is logged. Every time you port you are directed to a different server. Theese servers build a quite huge and advanced SAN (not sure they use that type of network) or cluster.

The largest problem with mmo is that the servers must handle loads of small packets that constantly are running through. This sets some high standards on the hardware that has to be used to be able to handle all the traffic.

I will try and make a little graphic how it can be built up

Login server Login server Login server
|
Midgard Albion Hibernia
| | | | | | | | |
Classic SI ToA Classic SI ToA Classic SI ToA
| | | | | | | | |
Dungeons Dungeons Dungeons

Hope that this ugly graphic gives you an idea how it is built. Every Realm will probably also have each of their own backup server. On top of this every server has a numerous of harddrives that stores the zones, keep track of every player etc etc.

Then we have the network that handles the connections via all the servers. I would guess they use some sort of gigalan network from Dell because afaik their servers comes from them.

As you can see they have built is this way so that if 1 server goes down it won´t stop every1 from playing. The only problem is if the login servers goes down.

I hope this shread some light of how it is built up. Ofc I cannot say that GOA have made it this way. It´s just a standard of connecting servers to eachother

Its strange, how you just assume that everyone know thats each "Server" is actually a cluster of servers.

I think that they should actually buy Sun Starfire servers (get 3/4 machines for each cluster), but I think we are worth it.

SkarIronfist said:

I think that they should actually buy Sun Starfire servers (get 3/4 machines for each cluster)

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The DAoC server software is currently based on Linux, and depending on the
skill of the Mythic programmers, they may not have made it entirely as easy
to port (although it's not many weeks of work to go from one Unix-derivative
to another - testing is the main effort here). They may even have made
assumptions related to the byte-order on the processors, although as far as
I know, they are still using MySQL for character/world data etc.
(I'd personally use Postgres

So porting to Solaris (the sanest option on a Starfire) would possibly introduce
more interesting bugs
I think we are suffering enough already. Fix what's currently broken in the
*software* before pondering changing to a completely different form of
hardware. Oh, and could someone at GOA please check there isn't a dangling
network cable behind one of the Prydwen boxes, thank you?

Mr.Brand said:

although as far as
I know, they are still using MySQL for character/world data etc.
(I'd personally use Postgres

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They use XML for databasing (if XML is MySQL technology, then excuse me )

French Connection - a movie about bad routing and ancient software, on a cinema near you soon!



No offence goa

Iceforge said:

They use XML for databasing (if XML is MySQL technology, then excuse me )

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You don't know what XML is

XML is just a text format similar to HTML, but meant for getting out
information rather presentation.

MySQL is a database server - the only relation between the two is that some
of the contents of the database is exported as XML so people can connect
to The Herald and get a summary of the information.

Links:
http://www.mysql.com/
and
http://www.w3.org/
should get you started if you really want to know

they are using xml for some graphic such as char info bar and text bar and that. Those things u can alter in ToA is made in xml. (easily said ofc)

http://www.daoc.it/hardware/

If you look closely at the last 3 pictures you can actually see the Mid/Pryd server has been placed on top of the Italian server for comparison. :eek2:

Amazing how many people posting tech-opinions & explainations, when they so obviously have no clue about hardware, applicationservers, networking and goa setup in general...
The techs over at GOA are probably laughing their asses off at these posts

Hekate said:

Amazing how many people posting tech-opinions & explainations, when they so obviously have no clue about hardware, applicationservers, networking and goa setup in general...
The techs over at GOA are probably laughing their asses off at these posts

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Bet they are

I do actually know a little about what they use on the software side, though.
Mythic have given interviews to various game development-related sites,
with a bit of detail. You can find out an awful lot once you start digging