We had a final test tonight using a virtual server in Amazon's EC2 cloud computing to run a Star Sonata server, databases, web site, and forum, and it seemed to go very well. There were about 40 people that came over to help test, and most people reported an improved connection. The performance metrics seemed to indicate that the overall server framerate was nearly the same as what we're getting on Kattare, but the max lag in a 20 minute period was around 300ms, whereas Kattare suffers infrequent lags of up to 3000ms. The total bandwidth of EC2 also seems to be much greater. We're leaving it up overnight to see if the process degrades at all over time. If you're quick, you can still test it by pointing your client to liberty.starsonata.com.

There are still a couple of things we need to fix in order to move everything over to EC2, but I expect we will be moving the official live server over there fairly soon.

Wont that 300ms lag increase with a larger active playerbase on it? If so how much do you expect it to increase?

Also, where is the Liberty server located?

And one last thing, if this drastically lowers lag, will you marry me?

Well, EC2 seems to have very fast I/O. The 3000ms lags we get on Kattare is all in DB reads. I don't remember what the biggest lag on a DB read I saw on EC2, but it was something like 120ms. The biggest lag on EC2 that I saw was in galaxy::IdleAll -- probably when a bunch of DG's were going to sleep or something. So basically the thing that is lagging Kattare seems to hardly lag EC2 at all, so I don't think that 300ms will go up much with more players. (fingers crossed)

I'm not sure where it is located, other than a cloud in the US. Maybe Jey knows better. We are running on a virtual machine that is hosted by Amazon's cloud, not an actual machine located somewhere. I mean, it is running on some sort of actual machine somewhere at any one time, but it can be handed off to another machine automatically for whatever reason at any time, I believe, without us noticing.

No.

Awesome.

*starts hunting down Jey*

Damn.

Heh, new signature ftw.

Anyway, sounds great, does this mean the uni won't lag as much as it ages?

The servers are somewhere in the us-east. If i remember correctly, there are 3 locations where it could end up when we start it. It would never be switched while actually running. But if we stop it for a while and start a new one, it could be at another location still on the east coast.


Bandwith wise, from the test i could do, were talking of at least 10 times faster than kattare (thats a very least).

On the performance issue, the disk io is a lot faster than our current server, resulting in a lot less delay in db access. Not to mention that we have more options to fix lag issue quickly compared to kattare.

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet..

/me hugs Jeff and Jey


My names Josh lolz 3 J's....

anyways this sounds very good. Any fix to lag (albiet not complete) would make the game more appealing.


Kanga

isn't liberty.sta.... the old server adress ?

It was liquid.starsonata.com. I think.

aye, liquid was old, rb-ridden, laggy, bugged, but still coolz

Kanga

The new server has improved my gameplay as a Seer much.

It has nearly halfed my averaged ping time to 100 - 110ms (before 190 - 200).
But more important is that the odd few seconds lag - which is as Seer not only annoying but often also critical - which had become common in the last few weeks is now rarly seen.

I also have observed that this type of lag has been a bit different but I don't have exact data on it:
- AIs reappear more often in different location after lag - looks like it used a PWI
- AIs - in this case observed on prog rosies as I do them often in the same DG over and over - react different after lag, the movement and retaliaton fire (after a missed shot cause of lag) differs from the old server

Is the "ping liberty.starsonata.com" the right approach now to track down ping time or is it a forefront relay?

the ping is the right approach. if you could do a constant ping and check if it changed while you noticed those "different lags" it could be of use to find out where this lag is coming from.

And for those who didnt go to computer nerd school how do you do that?

-t i think