I have been with the Planet for sometime now and I like it for the most part. But I'm having some issues with my current dedicated that has me looking elsewhere. I have created a support ticket and it seems to be going no where. My problem is I have four COD4 servers and one UT2K4 server currently running. Only one server at anytime will have guest and pretty much the others run idle. I have confirmed that the box is not being stressed in any way such as cpu load or memory etc... But anytime we get a good game rolling with 10 or more people the server starts to get buggy as all hell. Connection interruption after connection interruption. People start to leave and we can't keep a steady crowd because of the poor playability. Can anyone push me in the right direction?

Any server information can be found at our website unreal Xtreme chaos

I don't have a fix for you but thought I would share my results.

I have a CoD4 install running on one of my servers and I have the connection issue also.
It only happens to some but I have done test after test and it is not hardware stress or connectivity.
When CoD4 drops, everything else is working fine. Pings never fail, I can remote control my server, http/ftp downloads/uploads never fail, etc.
I have even opened up all TCP and UDP ports for testing but that didn't help either so it may not be firewall related.

The only thing I can think of is an issue communicating to the master CoD4 management servers even though those servers should not even play a role in clients connecting directly to a specific game server.

yeah pretty troublesome... I play on other server which do not have this problem but yet they are with another provider. It's making me lean more towards a gaming provider rather than the Planet. I would also have issues in my UT server as well. I have tried everything as well now support wants me to do a trace route.... LOL

What box are you renting?

What server do you have and what do you have anything else running besides the four cod4 servers and ut ? Teamspeak ? VNC etc. Also if you are NOT needing to run a web server disable IIS to lighten the load.

I was running a dual core zeon 1.8 and had five cod4 servers up no problem but I also had two gig ram . I ve also ran cod4 servers on a p4 2.4 with the planet with no problems.

Cpu
Memory
Dual or Quad core

COD 4 is easy on the cpu but eats memory like a hog.
what are your max rates set to and what port speed do you have. 10mb 100 mb ? If you are running a dual or quad core move each server to its own core as much as possible.

Also make sure you are NOT trying to have RDP running while playing on the server via the game , It will give you headaches .


Also have you tried the simplest ? shut down the other servers and try running just one to see if you have problems.

Right now I am running a quad-core 3210 with 4 gigs of memory on a 100mb port and have no problems running 5 hl2 servers , two cod4 servers and a poker server all of which have no problems. I am in the H2 data center.


And dont laugh about a trace rt , get a few from other members that join your server ,

Give them a few tracrts looks like you might have problems in the network-hops 9 and 10 are very jumpy

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Hop | %loss | IP Address | Node Name | Location | ms | Graph | Network |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | 0 | 69.65.110.165 | dtg445.visualware.com | Ashburn, VA, USA? | - | | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 1 | 0 | 205.234.111.129 | r03-8.iad.defenderhosting.com | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | + | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 2 | 0 | 69.65.112.25 | r01.iad.defenderhosting.com | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | + | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 3 | 0 | 208.111.133.114 | - | Tempe, AZ, USA? | 0 | + | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-3 |
| 4 | 0 | 208.111.133.113 | tge12-4.fr4.iad.llnw.net | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | + | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-3 |
| 5 | 0 | 69.28.172.33 | tge1-2.fr4.atl1.llnw.net | Atlanta, GA, USA | 17 | +- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-1 |
| 6 | 0 | 68.142.119.193 | ve5.fr3.atl1.llnw.net | Atlanta, GA, USA | 16 | +- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-2 |
| 7 | 0 | 69.28.172.61 | tge1-3.fr4.dal.llnw.net | Dallas, TX, USA | 36 | +- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-1 |
| 8 | 0 | 206.223.118.3 | eq-dallas-1000M.theplanet.com | - | 35 | + | Equinix Inc. EQUINIX-IX-DAL |
| 9 | 0 | 70.87.253.14 | te9-2.dsr01.dllstx3.theplanet.com | Dallas, TX, USA | 44 | -+---- | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-13 |
| 10 | 0 | 70.87.253.118 | 76.fd.5746.static.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 62 | --+------ | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-13 |
| 11 | 0 | 12.96.160.8 | po1.car06.dllstx6.theplanet.com | Dallas, TX, USA | 38 | +-- | THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES THEPLANE725-160 |
| 12 | 0 | 74.54.72.151 | 97.48.364a.static.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 35 | + | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-14

as opposed to my server in the same center ,

I would say there is something wierd going on with your routing
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Hop | %loss | IP Address | Node Name | Location | ms | Graph | Network |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | 0 | 69.65.110.165 | dtg445.visualware.com | Ashburn, VA, USA? | - | | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 1 | 0 | 205.234.111.129 | r03-8.iad.defenderhosting.com | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | + | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 2 | 0 | 69.65.112.25 | r01.iad.defenderhosting.com | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | +---- | Defender Technologies Group LLC DEFENDER-1 |
| 3 | 0 | 208.111.133.114 | - | Tempe, AZ, USA? | 0 | + | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-3 |
| 4 | 0 | 208.111.133.113 | tge12-4.fr4.iad.llnw.net | Washington, DC, USA | 0 | +- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-3 |
| 5 | 0 | 69.28.172.33 | tge1-2.fr4.atl1.llnw.net | Atlanta, GA, USA | 16 | +-- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-1 |
| 6 | 0 | 68.142.119.193 | ve5.fr3.atl1.llnw.net | Atlanta, GA, USA | 16 | +-- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-2 |
| 7 | 0 | 69.28.172.61 | tge1-3.fr4.dal.llnw.net | Dallas, TX, USA | 36 | +- | Limelight Networks Inc. LLNW-1 |
| 8 | 0 | 206.223.118.3 | eq-dallas-1000M.theplanet.com | - | 35 | + | Equinix Inc. EQUINIX-IX-DAL |
| 9 | 0 | 70.87.253.54 | et1-1.ibr02.hstntx1.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 39 | +- | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-13 |
| 10 | 0 | 70.87.253.58 | et1-3.ibr02.hstntx2.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 40 | + | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-13 |
| 11 | 0 | 74.55.252.118 | 76.fc.374a.static.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 40 | +-- | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-14 |
| 12 | 0 | 74.55.90.178 | b2.5a.374a.static.theplanet.com | Houston, TX, USA? | 40 | + | ThePlanet.com Internet Services Inc. NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-14 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey

We've run a Starsiege Tribes server at the dallas facility for over two years. For about two weeks now
we've also been running in to some sort of connectivity problem within the dallas facility. Every 5 minutes
we'd drop out for about 5 seconds. Some players would drop, others would regain connectivity.

During these 5 second dropouts the server's outgoing packets made it to clients but the incoming packets
did not make it to the server.

Pings to the server during the 5 second dropouts did not get replied to, however, pings to the last router
before the game server never showed packet loss. We are fairly sure there is either a bad switch or
a bad uplink port on one of the switches. Possibly an over zealous statistics gathering program as well
(since it seemed periodic - every 5 min).

Anyway since they don't seem to be able to get this under control we've set up another server in a different
facility. Too bad I will miss my low ping.

0

You are clearly more familiar with running a dedicated server than I. I do appreciate the help! I have done this in the past and the pretty much just blew me off and said that they couldn't find a problem. But more than likely they knew I was clueless to what the problem was. So I have just kept running the servers like this since the initial setup. I have given them tracert after tracert but to no avail. What to do now? I know I don't have a load issue but thank you for the above tips. I'm really stuck with not knowing what to do and it seems easier to just move files and start new with another provider. I will however add this thread to my existing ticket.

OH and this is pretty much the exact problem we've had with the server as well....

Update! They have found nothing wrong with the connection or the box.... Just an overload when to many people connect to "ONE" of my servers at a time. So pretty much blowing it off once again. Funny thing we have only five servers and one that ever gets any traffic at one time. So the box can't handle pretty much one server.

I also turned off the IIS services... Don't think that would cause it to load up since I don't have web and only use FTP when I'm working on servers.

I see you are also running teamspeak on that same box . Teamspeak can be a bit of a resource and bandwidth hog .

what are the specs on your system you are basicly running six servers on the box might be a bit of a push on a low end system.

Cpu type and speed , amount of memory and port speed. Also check memory usage , how much is free and most importanly how much is being paged to disk.

Have you tried shutting down the other servers and only running ONE cod4 server and seeing if you still get the problem . its the best way to start to figure out what is not config right on your box.

Also the settings in the cod4 server config file can make a BIG diff in how the server performs .

what is your sv_maxrate set to in the cod 4 config file ? this is the most important setting to low and people will start to lag , too high and you will run out of bandwidth .

give a little info here and we can see if it can be sorted out.

CPU Type and speed (dual or quad core) ---------
Amount of memory on board ---------- hopefully more than 1 gig
Port speed 10mb or 100mb. -----------

what is the cpu load in % when the servers are stting idle and what is it when you have at least ten people in server.

really need to know this stuff above if you wish someone to help you figure this out .

I also see you are running punkbusters streaming.

Have you tried turning that off to test ,

I have had nothing but problems using them and just went back to punkbusters normal .

CPU: Xeon 3060

Memory: 2 gigs

Port Speed: 100 mb

I'm currently not streaming to PB at the moment. As far as the CPU % during Idle I'll have to wait till I get home and RDP. But if I remember correctly it's like 1. something at idle and not to sure when loaded. I have tried shutting down other servers in the past and still experienced the problem. So don't think it's a problem w/ other server running as well.


what is your sv_maxrate set to in the cod 4 config file ? What do you set your servers at? I can try that as well when I get home.

Thanks again for the help dustoff!

I have mine set at 0 which lets it run at max , seeing how I have a 100mb port .

I was running two to three cod servers a 3040 with two gis before I upgraded to a 3210 and it ran just fine so a 3060 should be screaming .

I will try the sv max set to 0 to see what happens.... Yeah I feel the same way that I should be able to throw a lot more at this box with no problems.

Hi All,


This is very interesting and informative discussion going on. I would like to know more about COD4 Server common problems. can anybody tell me about it ?



Thanks,