General Server Questions

[daboo]

So I'm currently away from my dorm, and will be until late Jan, but when I get back I'm planning on running a nexuiz server on one of my spare boxes. I think the readme for server installs (I forget where this is, but I've seen it before. I'll find it when I need it) will be enough for me to get online, but I have a couple questions for anyone who has run a nex server before.

About how much bandwidth does the server take (daily, weekly, etc)?
How resource intensive is it? (could I run mythtv on the same box?)
How much maintenance is necessary/are there often difficulties upgrading?

I'm probably going to setup the server no matter what the answers are to these questions, but I'd like to know how big of a headache I should prepare myself for.

[Mirio]

US or europe server?
anyway nice idea

[mkzelda]

I am glad to help any way I can.

daboo Wrote:About how much bandwidth does the server take (daily, weekly, etc)?

The [b]number of people playing or specing[/b] your server will add that multiplier to bandwidth used.

[b]sv_maxrate[/b] is the max bandwidth to use per client and defaults to 10000 or 20000 bytes / second. Set this too low and you'll see the latency clocks in the corner of your screen even in lan play. This isn't an effective way of lowering bandwidth insomuch as keeping random/broken/stray clients from taking 200k/s for some stupid reason like:

[b]sys_ticrate[/b] sets the frames per second. Both the client and the server set this. Common settings are 0.02, 0.03125, 0.05 which are 50fps, 30fps, 20fps. Ladder rules require either 0.03125 or 0.05, but most seem to run in 0.02 anyway. Obviously the more fps you have, the more bandwidth you'll use. Since demo files are just packet dumps, you can see how large one is and compare that against how long you played. 1v1 matches are 15 minutes+30 secs for voting. On 0.02 the dems are 3.5mb - 5.0mb. On 0.01 the dems are 5.5-7.5mb. At 5mb over 15 mins you're looking at ~5.5kb/s / client. Pad that by an extra 1kb/s. There is also a small growth per client, since each client has to be informed of the position of every other client. Although 6.5k/s / client is a good estimate, its more like (6.5k/s * num_clients) + (0.xx k/s * num_clients)

[b]cl_nogibs[/b] (the body parts that fly off when someone dies) are usually on by default and use a little bandwidth. Some clients may choose to turn cl_nogibs 1 and will use less bandwidth, depending on how many corpses are flying around. Since this is client based you have no control over this, and you wouldnt want to force disable this or it would mean demos/videos wont ever have gibs.

[b]sv_public 1[/b] means that your server appears in the master server list. Your server will respond to a few pings but that can add up in theory.

Other factors that can inflate the data rate are the maps, weapons, and rate-of-fire, but these factors are less significant.

daboo Wrote:How resource intensive is it? (could I run mythtv on the same box?)

I wouldn't want to run mythtv on the same machine unless its a beast or if the server wasn't meant to be very popular. You'd probably be fine most of the time but if you plan to have 8+ players your captures and/or the server may suffer. That being said, the server doesn't use much for resources. The more maps you put on your server the more ram you will use, because the game loads all the maps at start. I've done some bare minimum servers and some large ones, and it varies from 25mb-200mb of ram usage. The processor is barely used when no players are on, and once they are, it ranges from 5-35% cpu usage. If you're hitting 100% cpu then you need to change or rethink something.

daboo Wrote:How much maintenance is necessary/are there often difficulties upgrading?

Maintenance is minimal unless you're interested in svn code. If you follow the public releases, you'll be updating only as often as a new version comes out. The majority of your time as an admin will be spent adding maps, tweaking your settings for optimal play, and banning idiots if its public.

[Dokujisan]

I ran a server (Fusion CTF) on an athlon xp 1.6ghz with 512MB RAM (not locally, but at a hosting provider) and it also worked as a webserver serving a popular Kickboxing website. I then switched the nexuiz server over to a second server that was a sempron (1.4Ghz or something like that) with 512MB RAM. I had a max # of players set from 12 to 16 at different times, and mostly kept the base settings of everything else (ticrate, etc).

One thing that I learned was that some maps caused much more lag on the server than others. For example, Darkzone (which I enjoy) tended to lag the server quite a bit because of all of the hagar shots and electro balls. All of those extra elements caused the CPU usage to jump way up. Most maps ran okay though.

Bandwidth wasn't really a problem, but I had a max allowable of 2000GB (outgoing + incoming) per month. The server was full almost every night (this was right before Galt's Gulch servers came about) so the server got pushed pretty hard. I don't remember exactly how much bandwidth was used, but I know it didn't go over 1000GB. I remember thinking that I could've run two servers off one box if the CPU and RAM could handle it.

If you're running the server off your local cable connection, it won't work as well as a server like Galt's Gulch. I highly recommend using a dedicated server (or virtual dedicated) at a webhosting provider. Galt's gulch is at a hosting provider (softlayer.com) with really nice servers and very reliable and redundant network infrastructure. I did some research on hosting providers and was considering switching my servers over to softlayer even before Galt's Gulch was setup, but it is a bit pricey. A second hosting provider I was considering was cari.net, but their allowable bandwidth is only 1300GB/month instead of 2000GB/mo.

You could run two servers on one of these $100/month xeon servers easily, though you'd have to monitor the bandwidth if your server became popular. [url]http://www.cari.net/quad-core-xeon-kentsfield-dedicated-servers.html[/url]

[daboo]

Thanks for the quick replies.

1) It would be a US server.

2) Thanks for that, very useful info. Crunching some numbers, I think that comes out to 11.2652778GB / week for one user (if they are connected for the entire week). Unfortunately, our school limits us to 10GB/7 days, and while a server on its own probably wouldn't exceed that, the server in addition to my normal internet usage would...so a my server probably won't be public until I can get a real internet connection.

3) I would have been running it from my dorm room, and our university has excellent internet connectivity, but that bandwidth cap is annoying. I know I don't have the money to pay for a dedicated server - how is Galt's funded? I do, however, have a shared server at penguinwebhosting.com (~300GB bandwidth/mo). I haven't looked into the technical details of an install, but would it be possible on a shared server?

[mkzelda]

Galt works at a datacenter/isp

I have a lot of experience w/ edu connections and some success with getting around caps (tho likely not your kind). I'd love to help you get it going. Was there a type of server you had in mind? Personally I'd love to see more private keyhunt, 2v2 and 3v3 us servers.

Checking math here:
@10kb/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 7 days = 6,048,000kb/week / 1024 = 5906.25mb/week / 1024 = 5.8GB/week per client running all day every day. 10 is higher than the actual bandwidth per client anyway.
@7.5kb/s would be 3/4 of 5.8 = 4.35
@5.0kb/s would be 1/2 of 5.8 = 2.9
Running a private 3v3 or 2v2 will go unused for portions of the day as the games must be somewhat planned. I'd say it'd get used 1-6hrs a day.
@7.5kb/s @1hr a day @6 clients thats 185.6MB*6 = 1113.6MB
@7.5kb/s @6hr a day @6 clients thats 185.6MB*6 = 7795.2MB

10KB/s * 60 * 60 * 24 /1024 = 864MB/day(/client)

10GB/7days
10GB*1024MB=10240MB/7days=[b]1462.86MB/day[/b] /24=[b]60.95MB/hr[/b] /3600*1024=[b]17.337566KB/s alotted[/b]
Your own connection and any friends in your dorm would not count toward this total. At that rate, (2) is the maximum number of clients you can support to run all day every day. Obviously you wont have people that long, so run the server for 6 hours a day and that number becomes 4 * 17.337566 = 69.350264. At that number you can handle 8 clients. This still doesnt allow you personal downloads, so run 4 or 6 clients (2v2 or 3v3) and you're good :)

Your shared hosting probably doesnt allow persistent processes/connections. You'll have to read your AUP but I doubt you're allowed unless its costing you a lot of money.

If this extra server you have is a linux box, you could run QoS to schedule some of this and even intelligently allot more bandwidth if some has gone unused or throttle when approaching your limit. That way you're not just guessing and hoping that you dont get flagged for excessive usage

[daboo]

Galt is a lucky dude.

I can actually get around the cap pretty easily, but its a bit of a pain in the ass, and they can tell pretty easily (we unfortunately have IT guys who know what they're doing).

7.5 isn't too low? The math I was doing was at 20 kb/s (figured I'd highball it to be safe). I'm going to trust your math since its 5am and I suck at math even if I'm not tired.

I'd hoped to set up a CTF w/hook server, but I'm not sure. I'll take another look at this post tomorrow, but I'm leaning towards just leaving it on the campus lan for some friends and I, and only occasionally making it public.

thanks

[mkzelda]

15 is more of a good high number. If you're interested in CTF+hook, be warned that ctf maps and hook is a lot more cpu intensive. I don't know your browsing/downloading habits, but 10GB / 7 days would be really tough for me. I do that in a few hours. As far as making it public, you probably never have to do that. Playing on LAN comes at no penalty and should be fun for you. I rarely turn my servers public, instead its a safe place those of us who know about it can go to practice/warmup/get away from the crazy public 10 year olds. That'd probably work for you too.

[daboo]

10gig/week is really hard :( I get by

I've got no problem leaving it on the lan except that there aren't many players at my school (that I know of). That's the incentive for making it public.