Smaller server to avoid lag issues?

**Zhohar** · 06-11-2012, 02:06 AM

TX9 was a very rough place this morning: lots of lag, desync, and it took 20-30 mins to successfully join the server. Zombies would teleport from being agroed, to running through buildings and mountains, to walking in place not being agored at all. Players would routinely slide 50-60m over the place. This persisted for about 4-5 hours and through (many thanks to Damonte) at least 4 server restarts that I'm aware of, including a cold boot.

A group of 5-10 of us hit up another server after that, and there were significantly fewer issues. The only difference? Our server is 50 players max, this one was 25 players max.
- Red/orange chain was significantly less frequent: from TG's every 5-10 minutes, on this 25man server it was every once an hour, if that.
- Zombies behaved consistently - I actually pulled of silenced 1-shot headshots fairly consistently.
- Players' movement was smooth: we had Hobbit I believe snipe a fella that was moving around a car at 500+ meters.
- Group movement was smooth: we could reliably and quickly prone check each other without issues.
- Car movement was smooth: Baron was driving (east coast) and he never hit trees/obstacles though the server is west-coast.
- Re-joining was somewhat painful, but after a couple of attempts it went through. TX9 usually required 4-5 attempts for me.

Just so you're aware, Zho lives on the west coast, and the 25 man server is much closer to me. So take the above with a grain of salt. However, the group of people I ran with also confirmed that Seattle 15 was much more playable than TX9.

I'm sure the admins are aware of this, and are probably discussing it. If it's at all possible to try - can we get one (or maybe two) smaller servers? I'd wager that two 25-player servers would be ideal for us.

As a side note - awesome games on Seattle 15. We've amassed so much gear and kitted everyone out ... it's been hell of a fun day.

**Ytman** · 06-11-2012, 04:42 AM

No. Just a more aggressive restart schedule I'd bet.

The server runs smooth as silk for at least four hours after a restart.

**Apophis** · 06-11-2012, 07:29 AM

Going to drop down to 6 hours between restarts tonight and see how that holds up!

**Zhohar** · 06-11-2012, 11:15 AM

I hope it works. The restarts seemed to have no effect on Sunday - maybe it was just an issue with the master servers.

**Ytman** · 06-11-2012, 01:34 PM

Restarts always do wonders.

The restart this morning fixed the server time from about 1:30AM to 7:00AM. Why I bring up the time is that the server is sync'd with EST time. When it does not match this means its lagged.

Laggy 'aggro' Z's are largely a client side issue. I'll let the Dayz Wiki explain;

When you first see zombies mooching around town they are spawned by the server and every client that can see that position is told that a Zed is there, (unconfirmed if the model is always the same for every player the same way player skins are random when you log in and out etc)

Once you agro a Zed your LOCAL machine takes over the Pathing and relays the position to the server which then relays that to other players, because of this mechanic you quite often get Zed lag even if the server is not lagging nor you are from the server.

The best tactic if you find this happending alot is to obviously kill the zombie before it agros OR when you agro a zed prone to the floor and let your friend/s spam the "lagged zed" with bullets, if you don't have friends you should make some.

This is done to ease the load on the sever as if the server did the Pathing every time a Zed was agroed it would slow down horribly.

http://dayzwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Zombies

**Mosely** · 06-11-2012, 02:26 PM

Just wanted to say thanks to Apo and all other admins for their efforts - having to bounce around the country seeking servers last night certainly reminded me of the value of a solidly performing server administered by a trusted community. Time to dust off my supporting membership again!

**Damonte** · 06-11-2012, 02:51 PM

Your appreciation is certainly much appreciated in turn.

**Warlab** · 06-11-2012, 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by Zhohar

I hope it works. The restarts seemed to have no effect on Sunday - maybe it was just an issue with the master servers.

Sunday was particularly bad. I noticed it when Paint, TMan and I were running around together.
The server reboot didn't solve Sunday's issue.

So Apo/Damonte, can you tell from the server side when a reboot will fix issues and when it wont ?

**Damonte** · 06-11-2012, 03:12 PM

It isn't very cut and dry.

**BeSiege82** · 06-11-2012, 04:36 PM

is this related to this Sunday issue a problem with Sundays, ArmA, and DayZ, or is is it something else related to the servers themselves?

**Sir_Hobbit** · 06-12-2012, 04:51 AM

The texas server still has the highest ping (for me at least) compared to all the other texas servers. I am confused about this, as the tx9 server is about 60-100ms more in ping time, than all the others, which are all roughly the same.