Server Move - Timing and Information

Discussion in 'Shard News' started by Chris, Jun 13, 2016.

  1. Unknown_Hero

    Unknown_Hero Active Member

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    Only what I was told another shard does, not sure if it is true.
  2. Fireball

    Fireball Active Member
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    Unfortunately the laws of physics must prevail and the speed of light must remain constant across the entire planet. UO must run on a single server. Even if you had entry points at different places around the World, all communications would have to travel the distance to the server making the ping just the same as if you had connected to the server directly.

    Unless this other server has created a wormhole of course...
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  3. Chris

    Chris Renaissance Staff
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    Not technically possible Unknown, information still has to travel around the world. Your ping to whatever IP you connect to in europe might be better, but information will still have to travel to a central server somewhere. Which takes time (the general cause for consternation by players, ping times).

    Even LoL, Overwatch, etc have servers spread all over the world so that you can play a game on a server as close to home. Most matchmaking services connect players in the same geographical area to achieve the best results. I've actually followed UO servers for a while now, and I have never seen a Free Shard host itself in more than one location unless it was hosting multiple servers.

    Again all that aside, if it was technicaly possible, it is an expensive and time consuming project. Something a for profit server might consider, however not in the cards for the volunteers here.

    We will however commit to finding the best global location for the server that serves our players, and provides adequate network security.
  4. WhiteZero

    WhiteZero New Member
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    The irony is palpable here...

    Chris is correct, of course. If you had some kind of "repeater" server in Europe that you connected to, which then sent you over to the USA based server, you'd still have that delay between Euro and USA, regardless of where you first connected. Packet switching takes time, especially going overseas.

    Generally speaking, the further you are away from the host, the more hops you'll encounter, increasing your latency (lag). International connections introduce more hops than intranational connections, naturally.

    /network admin

    I guess theoretically there could be some kind of system in place that "mirrors" the server. Say everyone in Europe is on the Euro Mirror and everyone in the USA is in the USA mirror, and player actions between the two are synced. So while your own connection and movement would be less laggy, your perception of everyone from the other mirror would be just as laggy. I doubt this is possible in UO though.
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2016
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  5. Unknown_Hero

    Unknown_Hero Active Member

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    Bel Air, MD would be the perfect location.
  6. Unknown_Hero

    Unknown_Hero Active Member

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    Guess I was lied to, didn't sound possible.
  7. Garresh

    Garresh Member

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    Im not a network admin, but I have some contacts in the games industry after a brief foray in college, and some general coding knowledge due to my career.

    Youre pretty much spot on, but even that theoretical mirror system outright wouldnt work. The reason is thst for solo PvE, or any system where players dont interact directly, its perfectly fine. But for group PvE or PvP, a mirrored system fails outright. The reason being that with both servers doing game stat calculations, but having different input times from players, the servers have to choose which game state is "correct".

    An example...

    Garresh lives in the US. Sabrina lives in the EU.

    Garresh walks up to sabrina, and starts snooping.
    Sabrina sees this, and rides away.
    Before the game state update can pass from the EU to the US server, Garresh steals Sabrina's fish steak.

    Now US is saying Garresh is the best thief ever, and totally stole her lunch.

    EU is saying lol wut. Sabrinas too smart to fall for that, and CLEARLY was 20 feet away before Garresh even tried.

    Which game state is correct?

    This problem is already bad enough with one server and 2 clients. Its only making the problem worse if you mirror. Speaking of, if you want to see a game with awful client server synch problems, check out Overwatch some time. Great game, but terrible netcode. Tons of videos of people being shot through walls, or seeing killcams of them suddenly standing still for half a second due to Blizzard's favor the lagger shooter netcode policy.

    Anyways, the tldr is for multiplayer games, you want the minimum number of game states possible, which means no extra servers or clients besides 1 server and a client per player.
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  8. Kiryana

    Kiryana Well-Known Member

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    His old Ping I do not remember, but the play was very cool and comfortable, a great server and the great people here to see prices !!! I would hope that Chris and the team will find a way out of this situation is not easy, thank you!
    I play in Russia and the way through VPN.


    through VPN
    PING play.uorenaissance.com (199.59.161.210): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=0 ttl=119 time=219.726 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=1 ttl=119 time=220.127 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=2 ttl=119 time=219.832 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=3 ttl=119 time=220.100 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=4 ttl=119 time=220.414 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=5 ttl=119 time=219.948 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=6 ttl=119 time=220.118 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=7 ttl=119 time=220.198 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=8 ttl=119 time=220.263 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=9 ttl=119 time=220.074 ms
    --- play.uorenaissance.com ping statistics ---
    10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 219.726/220.080/220.414/0.192 ms

    free VPN
    PING play.uorenaissance.com (199.59.161.210): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=0 ttl=114 time=277.581 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=1 ttl=114 time=301.537 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=2 ttl=114 time=324.215 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=3 ttl=114 time=245.671 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=4 ttl=114 time=268.540 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=5 ttl=114 time=292.328 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=6 ttl=114 time=229.359 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=7 ttl=114 time=339.289 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=8 ttl=114 time=260.239 ms
    64 bytes from 199.59.161.210: icmp_seq=9 ttl=114 time=284.074 ms
    --- play.uorenaissance.com ping statistics ---
    10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 229.359/282.283/339.289/32.126 ms
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2016
  9. Artex

    Artex Well-Known Member
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    Western NY - Prior to the move -ping 50-70ms. Right after the move 170-200ms. Seems to have improved, now I'm 90-110ms.
  10. Mundungu !

    Mundungu ! Member
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    In the end, my playing quality has gone in the shitter.
    Still I don't care, I even became a subscriber.
    :)

    Edit: typo
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  11. Sathar

    Sathar Member

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    I play from Australia, everyone shhhhhh
  12. Labeler

    Labeler Well-Known Member
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    hi all

    a small idea on all this server stuff...
    why not have US facet, the feluccia we call it to day and play on the US server.... notthing special
    but
    have a 2nd server in europe (which is actually a COPY of the current) but, you could consider this as the OLD TRAMMEL / FELUCIA?
    just give the 2nd server the same laws & rules as the one today

    in short:

    US server copied to europe
    let players travel via moongates between the 2 facets (US felucia & EU felucia)

    the downside is:
    you would be doubling the world size , which decreases the population / tiles
    this could have market impacts but for these, i got other ideas too so the market is not impacted.


    upside:
    people can still meet eachother on the chosen Server (taking the pros & cons of LAG & other Time zone related differences)
    people can play their own server, with the BEST ping possible..

    no difference at all:
    if i play a US server in the morning (out from belgium europe) there is noone online to PK me cause US is asleep
    it wouldnt change if i had a Ping of 200 or 20...., it wold only improve my experience and response time not to die in a connection drop by a ratman for instance.

    Chris,
    let me know if you need hardware for europe someday. i work at a pc/enterprise coorporation.. if gods are with us, we can set you for some nice high end enterprise stuff.
    Canis likes this.
  13. Wodan

    Wodan Well-Known Member
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    Derp!?!?!
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  14. Lyta

    Lyta Well-Known Member
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    I busted a gut. That was a good laugh - thanks man!
    Arawn likes this.
  15. Cynic

    Cynic Well-Known Member
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    I keep running into connection problems since the move. Random DC's on a random account. My ping has been getting worse each week. After the move I went from 12ish ping to 80, not too bad. Since the move I'm well over 150, sometimes peaking 300+ depending on the time of day.

    Sometimes I can't reconnect after a DC, sometimes manually closing my clients and reconnecting doesn't work either. Just like it did when the server was being DDOS'd.

    Seems the connection issues vary by time of day, or even by the day itself. Sometimes I go to work and come home to accounts struggling to stay connected. Other times I don't see a hiccup.

    Not an issue on my side that I can tell, never had an issue with UOR until after the move. I maintain connection to the internet during these times as I'm still browsing the internet flawlessly and my IRC never skips a beat.
  16. Kiryana

    Kiryana Well-Known Member

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    <<< Try connect via vpn! Definitely the exact time of day plays an important role and affects the speed, although this is relative and always different! Ever since I began to use VPN, I have fewer problems and get to play clean;) But if I do not use VPN, it is impossible to play !!! So in my case, VPN saved me! I mean streak Russia;)
  17. Sukha

    Sukha New Member

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    This Server has double ms of any other US based shard for EU players :(
  18. STAVROGIN

    STAVROGIN Well-Known Member

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    MOVE BACK TO EAST FO CHRIST SAKE
  19. Joshius

    Joshius Well-Known Member

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    Wasn't this issue cause by something on your network Cynic?? How has it been since you discovered the problem?
  20. Cynic

    Cynic Well-Known Member
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    Yes, I'm not seeing the lag spikes caused by severe bursts of packet loss anymore. I had a bad hub connected to a 2nd computer in the office that was apparently casting some spells on my connection.

    I'm back to the same ol' 80-90ish ping.

    I want to give Telamon a big thanks for helping me troubleshoot my end, took a while, but we figured it out.

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