Server performance

[Hammelpilaw]

Hi,

 

I did some testing about server performance on our server, and figured out why performance problems did not change much on current beta update (but problem is the same in stable version, so I did not post in beta forum).

 

What I exactly did:

I entered a sector with faction war, to cause huge lags. After 3min (give the server some time to increase the lags  ;) ) I printed out the profiling stats file (live_server.txt). The lags were incredible, the response time was huge, I was unable to hit any ship and so on. But the server cpu load was low (yes, already a known problem).

 

Performance[ void Server::update(float): 3803.11 ms; 100% ]

 

 

Then I downloaded a backup of the galaxy (I created the backup directly before testing), set up a server on my local computer and let a friend join it. Cause of my 6mbit connection it was very slow for him, but it worked.

I teleported him into the same sector with faction war I just tested on the live server. He got the same kind of lags like on live server, but much worse cause of my bad connection. But I did not get any lag, the response time was very good and cpu load was not too much, although the faction war went on and I had the client running too (local-copy_net-client.txt). I was in another sector and could play like there were no war.

 

 

In the end I restarted the galaxy with the backup and joined the faction war sector. There were some small lags cause the cpu load of the client was over 50%, cpu usage at all 100% (local-copy_local-client.txt). But I did not have any problem to hit other ships, the only few lags were very short.

Performance[ void Server::update(float): 646.4 ms; 100% ]

That was the worst value i got, most times it was 50ms.

 

 

Conclusion:

All the performance issues are a result of networking problems. This is the answer on many questions I saw in the forum like "why is the cpu load on 20% while lagging?" and so on. The server is really bored, he is just waiting for the network.

Version 0.12 has lot of performance improvements (wich is really good), but did not change the lags cause networking did not get improved.

 

Imo this should be the most important milestone for game developing: improve the network performance wich is currently really bad (not only in boss fights or faction fights).

 

 

Avorion and Server Verion: 0.12.3

 

Live Server:

Intel i7 2600k @ 4x 3.4 gHz

16gb ram

 

 

Client and local server:

Intel i5 6600k @ 4x 3.5gHz

32gb ram

NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 6gb

 

 

Sorry for my bad english, I hope it helps though  :)

live_server.zip

local-copy_local-client.zip

local-copy_net-client.zip

[CuriousFinger]

my server is well populated and this lag is killing it, the game is diminished massively is there anything i as a host can to help fix it. or is it the game and there is nothing i can do about it?

[Hammelpilaw]

It is a bug. I dont know why, but the server connection gets overloaded, even if the outgoing traffic is only about 4MBit (wich is not much for a server).

Even other games, running on the server, get lags too. Maybe too many packets or too many connections...?

 

The only thing you could try is to upgrade the connection, but i can't say if it helps.