Ladle 66

[Zenith]

CT USA was bad. -1

GMS CTA, uNk, and Revolver!

[PyrrhicVictory]

CT USA was trash.

I had no lag issues in the uNk server.

ggs uNk#1 and MYM!

[sinewav]

Great job everyone who played. There were a few upsets and some good Fortress was played out there. I'm withholding my server feedback until we can discover the root of today's problems. As most of you know, the servers were very bad, probably some of the worst performance to date.

This highlighted another problem, the one of missing server administrators. Redemption and uNknown were able to finish their matches, but it would have been less frustrating (and faster) had there been an admin around to help. I would like to revisit the idea of Global Moderators.

One of the reasons this idea did not take off, even though it would certainly be useful, is the lack of trust in the community. Looking back at the description I can see why -- it totally overreaches. Today, we are all much more comfortable with authentication and admin responsibilities, and for the most part things run smoothly. However, as we saw today there is still a need.

I propose we redefine and implement Global Moderators. First, a Global Moderator should only act as an assistant and only when called upon by both Team Leaders. Moderators will not, under any circumstances, make decisions or act as a judge between teams. They will be subordinates of Team Leaders with special authority. Second, I propose that all owner/players be given this position by default. It makes no sense that Zero or myself, who would handle these situations in our own servers during Ladle, could not do the same in others. If owner/players are trusted to help things along in one Ladle server they should be good to handle other servers.

In short, "a Global Moderator is an owner/player who acts as a subordinate to Team Leaders with limited responsibility for the purpose of helping teams after a server crash This could involve silencing specs or kicking them to make room for teammates, but have no authority to interfere with the teams in any way."

In case you are wondering about my motivation, it was the helpless feeling I had watching Redemption and uNk play to "30 points" after a server crash. It is a clumsy way to end a meeting and everyone was exceedingly frustrated. We should have more fun!


Also, global stats attached. Check yours.

[Soul]

Definitely would have helped today. There has to be enough of these people so there is always an "admin" in every game.

[Magi]

With the exception of the two crashes in AoT UK, the server ran pretty smoothly for me, but weird that so many servers were crashing.
Gms rogue and revolver; look forward to playing you again in the future ^^

[compguygene]

I would just like to kick in a little feedback about servers in general this weekend. I have been testing some new hosting servers that I setup. I have found that since about Friday night, I have not found a server, not my own or any server in the game that has not had weird lags. So, I took the time to look up the network health of the "London Loop" which is a major bottleneck for Internet traffic that crosses too and from Europe. This weekend had a number of major re-routing events where the "London Loop" has been constisntly nearing it's limits on traffic.
This has been a known problem for almost 2 years now, and the only solution is the laying of more undersea cables across the Atlantic. Nobody has been able to come up with the cash needed to pay for this/ So, some weekends and even some rare weekdays this happens. I know that when I had several of my Irish and Virginia servers pinging each other, what are normally very stable pings had a lot more variance than is normal, and is the kind of ping instability that makes playing tron rather randomly laggy.

[kyle]

what are normally very stable pings had a lot more jitter than is normal, and is the kind of ping instability that makes playing tron rather randomly laggy.

Fixed

Also i did look into CT USA it seams mysql is eating up ram, I am working on correcting this issue. I will make sure to restart my server before next tourney if it continues doing this.

[compguygene]

what are normally very stable pings had a lot more jitter than is normal, and is the kind of ping instability that makes playing tron rather randomly laggy.

Fixed

Also i did look into CT USA it seams mysql is eating up ram, I am working on correcting this issue. I will make sure to restart my server before next tourney if it continues doing this.

Thanks for the correction

I remember about 2 years ago we had several long conversations about why you really shouldn't run tron on a VPS with MySql running. I know that you need it for your servers, and as we discussed, the best solution would be to switch to SqlIte, as other videogames use. Also, we agreed that there wasn't a good GUI admin tool. That is no longer the case. Sqlilte Expert http://www.sqliteexpert.com/ (the free personal version should easily answer your needs) and sqlite-manager http://code.google.com/p/sqlite-manager/ (a firefox add-on). I have used both of these tools in tinkering with an Sqlite database that I have been testing. It appears that Sqlite Expert will have the capabilities that you need, including some pretty easy ways to import the existing databases that you have.
I do hope that you give it a try. I am fully convinced that Sqlite is your best long-term solution, if you have the time to make the change.

[Fippmam]

rZ 1 was flawless except for that random crash vs Rev (+1)

Aot UK crashed twice in a match (D=) but was ok besides that (+0)

gms Rogue and Rev; gZ again Rd

[Z-Man]

Recordings:
I hope those bits happening on replacement servers are labelled correctly. As with last time, I could not babysit the recorders, so I just let them run and took the match breaks I noticed. And of course every server crash costs a lot of recording time. Speaking of which, nothing interesting could be gathered from the logs I received so far. Well, apart from the fact that the crashes were real crashes, not just collective connection losses. My current best guess is that it's a randomly triggered error that has been introduced into the codebase recently, so I'll be scanning those as a next step. Anyway, on with the recordings.

final_incomplete_red_vs_rev.aarec 35128kb 8934s

semi_ctusa_red_vs_unk_part1.aarec 36632kb 3765s
semi_rz1_ctb_vs_rrz_part2.aarec 21132kb 3171s
semi_unk_red_vs_unk_part1.aarec 13460kb 1800s

quarter_semi_aotuk_rev_vs_ctb_vs_rrz.aarec 44080kb 6579s

quarter_ctusa_mym_vs_unkt.aarec 20516kb 2453s

[Z-Man]

opening_quarter_ctliv_oops_vs_cta_vs_red.aarec 51480kb 6818s
opening_quarter_rz1_rrz_vs_rrz_vs_rt.aarec 55128kb 6786s

opening_aotuk_ctb_vs_id.aarec 29624kb 3336s
opening_ctusa_tunk_vs_unkt.aarec 30612kb 3263s
opening_unk_mym_vs_spd_incomplete.aarec 8124kb 771s (was just checking on the match progress)

[delinquent]

London loop

England (as a network point) is still getting a lot of the US<->Euro traffic, there's still something broken after that hurricane. More importantly, there are some odd things going on at major traffic times:

GMT mornings: A good 20% of traffic is being routed through Cork, Middlesborough and the funny internet highway that lies between Durham and Chester-le-Street. It takes a heck of a lot of strain from the London gateway, but it's slowing down a lot of traffic from Scotland and Northern Britain, as well as parts of the Midlands. For some reason, a lot of traffic bound for states east of Illinois is going through the BT datanet buildings in Durham. After pulling tables from my ISP, I've noticed Virgin is doing the same thing (although that can be explained by the company operating on a global scale, providing relief to it's US counterparts where possible). This is not only congesting British traffic, but slowing down the response times of US bound packets.

I think the answer does not lie in laying new cables (excuse the pun), but in un-wiring the damned mess that ARPAnet created. The whole telecommunications system is a mess of wires and satellite links, and it's only going to get worse. Plus, America seems to have control over much of the internet, despite the fact that it only accounts for so much usage. I could go on, but my views only get more radical.

Oh, and remember when we ran out of IPv4 addresses? What's going to happen when we run out of IPv6 addresses? Yeah, I know that's a fair while in the future, but it's going to happen.

Meh, the way of the world.

[sinewav]

The following quote is from a future time!

I'd suggest that is put in a new thread, so the teamleaders pay more attention to it. I like the idea, but I think the current teamleaders' voices are more relevant here.

Edited and moved.

[Word]

I'd suggest that is put in a new thread, so the teamleaders pay more attention to it. I like the idea, but I think the current teamleaders' voices are more relevant here.

[compguygene]

London loop

England (as a network point) is still getting a lot of the US<->Euro traffic, there's still something broken after that hurricane. More importantly, there are some odd things going on at major traffic times:

GMT mornings: A good 20% of traffic is being routed through Cork, Middlesborough and the funny internet highway that lies between Durham and Chester-le-Street. It takes a heck of a lot of strain from the London gateway, but it's slowing down a lot of traffic from Scotland and Northern Britain, as well as parts of the Midlands. For some reason, a lot of traffic bound for states east of Illinois is going through the BT datanet buildings in Durham. After pulling tables from my ISP, I've noticed Virgin is doing the same thing (although that can be explained by the company operating on a global scale, providing relief to it's US counterparts where possible). This is not only congesting British traffic, but slowing down the response times of US bound packets.

I think the answer does not lie in laying new cables (excuse the pun), but in un-wiring the damned mess that ARPAnet created. The whole telecommunications system is a mess of wires and satellite links, and it's only going to get worse. Plus, America seems to have control over much of the internet, despite the fact that it only accounts for so much usage. I could go on, but my views only get more radical.

Oh, and remember when we ran out of IPv4 addresses? What's going to happen when we run out of IPv6 addresses? Yeah, I know that's a fair while in the future, but it's going to happen.

Meh, the way of the world.

From what I have read Network Engineers saying its the combination of what you said and what I said. You have a much better understanding of the spaghetti wire of a mess that the London Exchange has become. Thank you for a detailed explanation that I have never seen anywhere.