alright, as most of you know i run two servers:

one is private, and is the server that i have been running for about 2 years now. the computer that it is on now and has been on is:
2.4ghz
512mb ram
windows 2000

the other, which i added last fall, is public. it is
600mhz
660MB ram
windows 2000

they are both on the same connection, and i have been getting reports of lag issues with the first server: the faster one. I cannot think of anything that would cause it to lag, whereas the computer that is 3 times slower runs better..

any help? keep in mind they are on the same connection, so connection usage is not the issue. this server didnt lag before, it just started in the past month or three.

please be thorough in any possiblities for this, thanks

Run task manager and watch it ('Processes' tab to see which process is using how much CPU etc) and see what happens when players report lag.

Also, try and reproduce the lag by taking note of the amount of players on each server.

Number of players isn't the issue. The Public server almost always has more than the private, and they both have the same number of maximum players.

Could line noise be a possibility? EMI? Are the machines close together or far apart?

http://ww2.u13.net/u13/ they are not close enoguh together, and nothing has changed about ther position to start this lag. the lag started while i was here at college, and nobody ventures into that site of the basement.

It isnt cpu related, there is nothing running on there which would cause it, and i have looked at the cpu usage while lag was being reported... nothing special.

btw, the monitors on those comps are always off, so it is not noise from them

Try to reinstall Windows?

yuk, that isnt an option.

this server, although everything is on separate drives, has far too much installed, and would take hours of constant work to bring back to where it is after a windows reinstall. i highly doubt that would help at all anyway. anything fixed by a reformat/reinstall would probably be just as easily fixed by reinstalling soldat or any other app which might be causing the problem.


n00bface and i have another theory:

people whine too much. him and i have played there, and i play there often enoguh to think there isnt any lag. there are server side bugs which cause hits not to register, kills not to show up in the console (or show a death message), but no more than the average server.

the reason i can understand hearing about this in my private server (and not the public) is because i am in touch with the people from my private server, whereas the public server is full of people who i dont know or talk to at all

I think i found the reason:

For the SMC site, I am running a standalone content management system named Plone (Elephant Hunter held a gun to my head and forced me to use it)

I was looking at the RAM usage, and the server had under 60MB free. I looked at the process list to see what was using the RAM, and this content manager's python backend was using almost 80MB, and apache was using almost 70. I disabled the content manager for now, and restarted apache. Between these two, I freed up a bunch of RAM and the soldat server started running much smoother.

Also the U13 site and hosted sites are running faster again with this RAM free, I am anxious how they will run after the upgrade I am looking into. I am looking to add another 512MB, bringing it up to 1gb. It'll cost up to $100 depending what I need, I have to check what hardware I have in the server before I decide

I will be looking for donations to buy more RAM for the server. Any U13 players who want to donate, please contact me, I have already heard from a couple of you that are interested in doing so.

btw, the SMC site will be down until I talk to Elephant Hunter about his crazy app that I installed for him