Wormnet and LAG - why? [Archive] - Team17 Forum

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Gnork
13 Feb 2008, 18:21
Hi!
Probably asked before but in a wrong forum, while in this forum I don't see this question, so here it is ;)
I'm wondering if the servers running Wormnet are having memory problems or a dying harddisk or something like that. The lags lately are immense, what was used to be a fast system feels like one big pile of old junk for some time already. What is going on? Could anybody from Team17 please explain why the Wormnet servers are acting like this? On various moments of the day it's even impossible to login to the system. Is this due to all the snoopers on Wormnet? Is the ISP having technical problems with a router may be? It takes all fun away to play a game nowadays and we all need to satisfy our worms addiction :p Login times of minutes instead of seconds, games lists not getting updated, people who can't join their own host because of the massive lag... it's really really horrible. Are there any upgrade plans for the server? Or did Team17 decide to just let these server die and thereby the game as well? EVERYbody in AG is complaining about this, and I'm amazed I didn't see this question here yet. Please provide an elaborate answer, I think we W:A players deserve to know what the *bleep* is going on here ;)

robowurmz
13 Feb 2008, 18:26
Problem known, said about in a thread only last week. Its because a lot of people are using prosnooper, and it makes the connection die.

Gnork
13 Feb 2008, 18:33
Problem known, said about in a thread only last week. Its because a lot of people are using prosnooper, and it makes the connection die.
aha, so the programmer who made that toy should BUG TEST his application before offering it to the world? <------
BRING OUT A NEW RELEASE THEN GRRRRR

yakuza
13 Feb 2008, 18:34
Problem known, said about in a thread only last week. Its because a lot of people are using prosnooper, and it makes the connection die.
Is this an assumption or a reported fact?

Gnork
13 Feb 2008, 18:38
Is this an assumption or a reported fact?
very good question. Using the search tool and typing 'Wormnet lag' doesn't give a satisfying answer, robowurmz

robowurmz
13 Feb 2008, 19:03
Cybershadow said it, which is cement for me.

bonz
13 Feb 2008, 19:37
Cybershadow said it, which is cement for me.
Word of Quarter-God is the truth.

yakuza
13 Feb 2008, 20:13
I'm either bad at searching or you guys are full of it. Care to link me to were Cybershadow says ProSnoop is the definite cause of Wormnet lag?

xDMxUnit
13 Feb 2008, 20:20
ha, busted :rolleyes:
^^

Melon
13 Feb 2008, 20:20
This post (http://forum.team17.co.uk/showpost.php?p=636457&postcount=9) caused the confusion.
This post (http://forum.team17.co.uk/showpost.php?p=636597&postcount=11) contians as near to the facts as we know so far.

Gnork
13 Feb 2008, 21:38
Word of Quarter-God is the truth.
Even a God can make mistakes though. Look at the mistake made when creating this world :p

CyberShadow
14 Feb 2008, 06:51
Huh, I don't remember saying that's the cause for sure. But if you look at #AnythingGoes as it is now, more than half of the players are using ProSnooper (this isn't visible from the game, you'd have to check with an IRC client). That was the cause of my suspicion. I've e-mailed the WormNET network administrator about it, but didn't receive a reply so far.

Chicken23
15 Feb 2008, 17:34
Or is it the increase in activity? Alot more players on wa wn these days and it only occurs during the prime hours early evening for europeans and early afternoon for the american timezones.

CyberShadow
15 Feb 2008, 18:38
Can someone find some corellation of when does this slowdown manifests or if it's dependant on your geographical position? Like, if it only happens at certain times of the day or only to some people and not to others?

Gnork
15 Feb 2008, 18:54
Can someone find some corellation of when does this slowdown manifests or if it's dependant on your geographical position? Like, if it only happens at certain times of the day or only to some people and not to others?
well, at the moment it's lagging already but still running, like usual around this time. it starts here* around 6pm and has a peak at 9pm... in one hour it will probably be thick soup in which you can have your spoon standing right up without falling.
*here is about next to the internet backbone leading from America/England to the rest of Europe

Etho.
15 Feb 2008, 20:11
It doesn't seem like ProSnooper is the problem. Three of the biggest bandwidth requirements on WormNet are when the client requests the WHO, WHOIS, & Game lists.
Older versions of ProSnooper ask for the gamelist every 5 seconds. The latest version asks for it every 10 seconds. Worms Armageddon requests the gamelist every 7 seconds. So ProSnooper probably wins here because I think most players have the latest version by now.
Worms Armageddon requests the WHO list (usually between 1 to 5 KB each time) every minute. ProSnooper only requests it once, when it joins the channel. ProSnooper definately wins here.
Both Worms Armageddon and ProSnooper request a WHOIS the same amount of times. So they are equal here.

ngg
15 Feb 2008, 21:52
i don't suppose team 17 just doesn't care, do they?=] i'm sure a lot of us believe that w:a is the greatest game ever made, no exaggeration. i think it'd be a shame to let it be hurt so much by this lag issue=) especially since all the lag just means that the game's getting even more well-known. the amount of exposure it's worthy of is much greater than even having 70 people in the lobby, so it'd be cool if the server could be improved to handle that, or additional servers or something. if it's just a financial issue, i know i'd pay at least $5 a month for a special server on wormnet, which would add up if lots of people subscribed to it

CyberShadow
16 Feb 2008, 05:25
Regarding ProSnooper: don't forget that people will have ProSnooper running for a much longer time than W:A. ProSnooper doesn't query the game list if it's minimized, but it does if it's just behind other windows.
ngg: no need to over-dramatize, we are working on the problem...

Etho.
16 Feb 2008, 19:53
Yes but, before ProSnooper, people were using Super Snooper which seems to be less efficient. Snooping does add stress to the server, there is no doubt about that. But, snooping has been around for years now, while these server issues have been more recent.

Muzer
16 Feb 2008, 21:16
But there weren't 99% of the WA population snooping, nor did it request the game list which you said was one of the major three server-draining things

CyberShadow
17 Feb 2008, 07:28
How about we ban ProSnooper users for 24 hours as an experiment and see how that goes? :)

Muzer
17 Feb 2008, 09:09
Good idea.

yakuza
17 Feb 2008, 13:59
But there weren't 99% of the WA population snooping, nor did it request the game list which you said was one of the major three server-draining things
WA itself requests the game list, and more often than Prosnoop. Read.
If you gonna go by trial and error you should also ban HB for 24 hours see how that goes. Although by banning Prosnoop for a day you'll have 50% of the people in AG, so if the issue has anything to do with the number of people there then the test will be ineffective.

Gnork
17 Feb 2008, 15:42
Actually I suspect HB to be the problem. Since this tool is around wormnet lags. The snooper was released before HB, no?

CyberShadow
17 Feb 2008, 17:29
Could someone explain how exactly does this lag manifest? What exactly is lagging, on which actions, etc. etc.

Melon
17 Feb 2008, 17:58
Normally for me, when WormNet gets too busy and laggy, it goes like this:
First of all, I can't even get to the main wormnet screen where I choose a channel to go onto. If I can, I then can't even get into #AnythingGoes. If I minimise and restore, this sometimes happens, although it might be unrelated. This only appears to happen when it's so laggy I can't get in very easily.
Pic (http://www.kieranmillar.com/wa/too_much_lag.png)
I imagine though that this continuous trying and re-trying of trying to get in causes an even larger hit on the server.
Next, you get into #AG, and everyone's trying to host, but when you do host, it times out creating the game, and you stay in #AG. Unfortunately, your game then appears on the games list, and it's unjoinable, largely because I'm not in it. Everybody threfore seems to try and host again, and so on. Same happens with HB, the games people request don't show up, so people request over and over again.
This has happened with just over 50 people in #AG before, although I imagine it's actually more than that, it's just nobody can get in. Again, this is something I've experienced, and I can't guarantee it's the same for everyone.
(If you're interested, one guy came into #Help and said that he's never noticed the problem when a lot of American people are playing, but a lot of people in from Europe seems to slow it all down. This may mean nothing though)

Gnork
17 Feb 2008, 18:04
don't forget to mention the stuttering in the ag chat. it seems like the screen is stuck, then suddenly you get several join/quit/chat messages from the last people and meanwhile its impossible to move the scrollbar in the players list.
edit: btw, why is prosnooper asking for a games list if the program is not focused. it should stop doing that as soon as you go into a game or minimize it to system tray, no? there is no use for that anyway - i guess most users only want to know if a buddy comes online while you are playing.

yakuza
17 Feb 2008, 19:10
From my own experience:
It well take ages to get into the lobby channel list and sometimes will fail attempt. It is easier to get to #Anythinggoes via Prosnooper though, although when wormnet is laggy it still can take 30 seconds or so to load.
The chat works without any kind of problems via ProSnoop. The problem appears when people try to host, most of the time they timeout and even though you see their game hosted you also still see them in the channel and so you are unable to join the ghost game.
This has also happened a few times when there were only around 30 people in the channels.

Gnork
17 Feb 2008, 19:47
prosnooper hangs regularly, if ag is lagging the snooper will not respond. but you won't notice until you try to move its window. and it will start responding again if it gets data from the server.

yakuza
17 Feb 2008, 20:01
If that's in response to what I said, no, it doesn't happen to me. And as far as I'm aware, when #AG starts to lag most people prefer to connect via ProSnoop because it's faster and more stable than being in #AG through Worms. Plus it has a update games feature which you can use if the games don't refresh and that unlike WA, it works every time.

Muzer
17 Feb 2008, 20:18
WA itself requests the game list, and more often than Prosnoop. Read.
But what I'm saying, is now perhaps everyone who used SS have now switched to PS, so suddenly you get all these new game requests that you never got before. Remember there have been people who snoop all day, and with PS more people are using it as well as all the ex-SS users, which means you're constantly getting game list requests. The fact that PS asks for the game list even when in the background probably alieviates (sp?) the problem, because not many people I know from watching them on the computer minimize a window without a good reason, most only change the focus.

yakuza
17 Feb 2008, 23:11
Well, there has been times in the past were there has been 50 up to 100 people on Wormnet and this lag wasn't happening.

Etho.
18 Feb 2008, 03:40
There's really no reason now for W:A or ProSnooper to keep asking for a gamelist every few seconds. Both the W:A client and ProSnooper now announce when someone hosts a game, in a quit message or actiontext. It would save the server a lot of spam if it just requested the gamelist when someone actually hosts a game.

franpa
18 Feb 2008, 06:24
i notice that...
1) It is hard to log in, it will take forever to get past the black "please wait" screen just before listing the channels then it will take a while to list the channels.
2) it takes a while to enter a channel
3) available games don't update properly and hitting refresh usually results in the curser staying as a clock and everything visually freezing. no more conversations, no more game updates, no more people joining/leaving.
4) sometimes it takes ages to join wormnet and this is solved by restarting W:A.
5) hosting a game as mentioned takes a while to work (i haven't had it fail on me yet)
6) finishing a game usually results in you needing to restart W:A in order for the channels to list again.
all this happens with 35+ people.

CyberShadow
18 Feb 2008, 06:25
There's really no reason now for W:A or ProSnooper to keep asking for a gamelist every few seconds. Both the W:A client and ProSnooper now announce when someone hosts a game, in a quit message or actiontext. It would save the server a lot of spam if it just requested the gamelist when someone actually hosts a game.
This is only true for the latest W:A beta.

Muzer
18 Feb 2008, 08:32
Are you saying that WA didn't used to request the game list a lot? Or are you saying it always had but you've changed it in the alpha?

CyberShadow
18 Feb 2008, 08:33
Game versions before 3.6.28.0 do not announce anything over IRC when the user hosts a game.

Etho.
18 Feb 2008, 16:41
A small price to pay I think. During busy hours, W:A's game list would get refreshed frequently anyways. It might encourage people to update to the latest patch sooner. Also, if it really bothers someone who refuses to update, they could always just host using ProSnooper.

CyberShadow
18 Feb 2008, 17:12
We can't force anyone to upgrade to Beta versions. Backwards compatibility is a must. Think of the TryMedia lousers.

Shadowmoon
18 Feb 2008, 17:24
I've noticed that Wormnet has got slow lately too. I don't really go on it that much, because half of the games you go to, you'll lose connection.
But it really is slow.

Muzer
18 Feb 2008, 17:33
We can't force anyone to upgrade to Beta versions. Backwards compatibility is a must. Think of the TryMedia lousers.
But that would be an even better excuse for Trymedia to give everyone refunds, and take WA off their site once and for all.

yakuza
18 Feb 2008, 17:35
I've noticed that Wormnet has got slow lately too. I don't really go on it that much, because half of the games you go to, you'll lose connection.
Wormnet lag has nothing to do with being disconnected from games, in fact, if you're dropping from half the games you join it is probably a problem with your connection seeing as the percentage is not close to what I suppose is the average of a normal player.
But that would be an even better excuse for Trymedia to give everyone refunds, and take WA off their site once and for all.
Right, and everyone who buys a VHS player should also get a refund.

CyberShadow
18 Feb 2008, 17:36
But that would be an even better excuse for Trymedia to give everyone refunds, and take WA off their site once and for all.
It would also be a reason for Team17 to give us a smacking for enforcing our Beta updates on people. If we broke things for TryMedia users, TryMedia is likely to complain to Team17.

Shadowmoon
18 Feb 2008, 17:37
Wormnet lag has nothing to do with being disconnected from games, in fact, if you're dropping from half the games you join it is probably a problem with your connection seeing as the percentage is not close to what I suppose is the average of a normal player.
Oh no, there's no problem with my connection. When i host a game, people can join, but its when i join other peoples games, i keep losing connection with them.
I rarely go on wormnet anymore cos of the stupid failures.

Muzer
18 Feb 2008, 17:41
When you're in a game, though, you're completely independant from Wormnet; everyone connects to the host's computer. That's why people have to have the ports forwarded, because unlike newer games a big server that everyone connects to isn't used as it wasn't feasible in 1999, and noone had routers or firewalls.

Etho.
18 Feb 2008, 19:20
I was under the impression that people with the latest beta can't play against TryMedia users anyway? TryMedia W:A clients would still function the same as they did before, so it wouldn't cause a problem for them.

CyberShadow
18 Feb 2008, 19:23
I was under the impression that people with the latest beta can't play against TryMedia users anyway?Of course they can, that's what engine version emulation is all about. Most people just don't want to play with them, but that's no reason to screw over backwards compatibility.TryMedia W:A clients would still function the same as they did before, so it wouldn't cause a problem for them.Then Beta users wouldn't see or immediately see pre-3.6.29.0+-users' games.

franpa
19 Feb 2008, 01:16
is it not possible to ban particular versions of W:A? can you not just ban all versions except the latest CD version and the latest Trymedia version?

CyberShadow
19 Feb 2008, 01:19
I don't see how that would be helpful in any way.

franpa
19 Feb 2008, 02:35
at the moment there are trymedia players and people not using the latest version of W:A and both request the game list on a timer. you could eliminate the people using a older version thus reducing the number of timed requests for a game list.

yakuza
19 Feb 2008, 02:58
Taking into account that one could ban Trymedia users from using Wormnet, which probably isn't even legal, or if it is, it's not very fair, what would that change? There's probably whole weeks were not one Trymedia user ventures into wormnet, we're talking about an extremely minor minority here. Of course, all of this assuming that the problem relies in game list request. You see Franpa, you can't just throw a suggestion for a solution ignoring all this facts and basing it solely on an assumption.

Wormetti
19 Feb 2008, 07:28
Then Beta users wouldn't see or immediately see pre-3.6.29.0+-users' games.
You could only request the server list if there are pre-3.6.29.0+ users on WormNet (also once on first connection). Can you detect pre-3.6.29.0+ users from the user list or do you have to request the game list to do so? Even if you had to get the games list, only one client would need to get the list and it could announce the games in the channel like the current beta does.
ProSnooper has no obligation to support pre-3.6.29.0+ users, so the author of that could disable game list requests or at least make them optional and off by default.

franpa
19 Feb 2008, 08:26
heh i had a extra 'not' in my post... i meant ban everyone except the Trymedia and the latest beta.

Muzer
19 Feb 2008, 08:45
Don't forget GameTap! That also uses a different version

CyberShadow
19 Feb 2008, 10:10
First of all, this doesn't solve anything because game clients still need to know when games are closed - and no IRC activity can show that. Second, banning any version range is the last solution I would try.

Etho.
19 Feb 2008, 20:11
game clients still need to know when games are closed
That's a really good point. I wasn't even thinking about that. I guess there's no good way to avoid requesting the game list unnecessarily with the way things are.
But, what do you think about not requesting the WHO list every minute? WHOIS looks up the same information that WHO does, only it does it as it is necessary. The only time WHO is really needed is when you join the channel, which, W:A doesn't even do. With 50 W:A users online, it wastes WormNet an average of about 3KB/s - 6KB/s.

yakuza
19 Feb 2008, 20:29
I was paying attention today. Wormnet worked great with 49 people. Wormnet went to hell with 55 people.
I think it's important to note that there seems to be no middle ground. It either works perfectly or it becomes a pain to get to #AG or get a game hosted.

Gnork
20 Feb 2008, 10:22
sounds like 50 is the magic number....

franpa
20 Feb 2008, 10:48
it really does seem like it's related to the type of clients connected to the IRC tho since the # of players to make it lag is rather dynamic.

franpa
15 Mar 2008, 04:53
#AG still lags terribly... sometimes it takes more then 30 seconds for a hosted game to get listed (hitting refresh does not speed this up).
only 30~ people are in #AG

yakuza
15 Mar 2008, 08:46
#AG still lags terribly... sometimes it takes more then 30 seconds for a hosted game to get listed (hitting refresh does not speed this up).
only 30~ people are in #AG
You know what's funny? It's been weeks since the problem has been solved. For everyone.
It doesn't take more than 30 seconds to get the games hosted list, it takes a bit more than it used to but the change is minimal. You're either exagerating or lagging yourself. Wormnet works wonders nowadays, even with 100 people on.

franpa
15 Mar 2008, 11:36
it could be me since i seem to have a network problem here and use a lan connection for my internet. i'll most likely know on monday when my dad brings home some network testing gear from work.

Gnork
17 Mar 2008, 11:01
like wireshark?

franpa
18 Mar 2008, 02:30
o_O something you plug both ends of a cat 5 cable into and it tests it. my dad got some new cables today and they work better then me old ones and my network problems appear to be gone ;)
i still get 5 to 10 seconds after someone hosts for there game to appear. they host with a snooper and it says it is hosting, then it appears 5 to 10 seconds after that message... probably because there loading the game up?

CyberShadow
18 Mar 2008, 04:03
That's the effect of caching which gave the speed-up. You'll just have to deal with it...

Gnork
18 Mar 2008, 11:39
at least it helped the lags ;) tyvm, cz it became impossible to play :)

franpa
18 Mar 2008, 22:58
what is cz?

Gnork
19 Mar 2008, 00:26
-> B-cuz :p

Melon
19 Mar 2008, 20:35
i still get 5 to 10 seconds after someone hosts for there game to appear. they host with a snooper and it says it is hosting, then it appears 5 to 10 seconds after that message... probably because there loading the game up?
Volcadmin came into #Help on WormNET today when doing some work to it, and I distracted him got chatting to him. I thought the following information was really useful, so I thought I'd post it here. Bear in mind the conversation was brief because he was busy, so I've assumed one or two things:
A while ago, you'll remember there was some awful lags that made WormNet unusable. Every time a player joined, left, or hit refresh, everybody got a new version of the game list. This meant that every second it could be calculating the game list for about 50 people, so the server quickly ground to a halt. (ProSnooper also quieries the game list a few extra times in addition to this, but the hit on the server is less severe)
Now, the same thing happens, but people only look at a cached version of the list, which is far far less of a server hit that generating a new list each time. The game list itself only updates every 15 seconds, so it doesn't matter how often you hit refresh, you're not going to see a difference until it's updated. Therefore, you should expect to wait at most 15 seconds for a game to appear on the list.

franpa
20 Mar 2008, 05:53
Ah, ok then.

rebert
27 Dec 2008, 16:55
boa tarde... como faça para poder jogar o worms net

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