Just curious, but what are the hardware requirements for a dedicated server? What sort of processor/network/disc/memory loads do you see whilst hosting on a given system.
Seen a lot of discussion of configuration, but not much on hardware.
I guess you do not need any fancy graphics hardware but how much computation load is on the processor or is this off loaded to the clients and just 'managed/routed' by the server or is it having to process the physics data of all clients? This would seem to be the big one for Host performance requirement.
I guess you could run a headless system managed from another PC to reduce costs and clutter.
I guess a 'proper' add on network card is a must have.
Does GPB support multi-core processors? Do they help at all?
Just wondering whether we are talking i7 or NUC type levels of performance
I've not tested much with lots of players but never seen my 4 year old i5 laptop pushed at all when 6 ish players are on, Nick may have some better stats with more players involved. I'd imagine the internet speed would be more of a concern when the numbers increase. I use a cable at all times with such things.
I'd suspect the most important thing for a server would be the network bandwidth, both upload and download.
Anyway, best person to ask this to: our server master, dibu :)
MaX.
I am just wondering, if a low power i.e. low noise/power and small 'mini pc' can be used as a dedicated server then i might set one up. Just need some idea of what the basic processing requirements would be. A simple box with no monitor/mouse/keyboard, a single small SSD or uSSD and a basic processor would be cheap, economical and unobtrusive to run.
What would be the best firewall solution?
Something like a 'track day' server and run the bikeMOD pack and some of the more unusual tracks, probably the UK ones for a bit of mindless fun.
If you do not need powerful graphics and the processor load is fairly low then plenty of very low cost options exist. I have decent broadband with low ping so i do not think that would be a problem. Upload bandwidth might be an issue as its typically 1/10th of the download bandwidth with my ISP without a special contract.
Just looking and an AMD FM2 system 'box' could be set up very cheaply :) but are you better with high clocks or more cores etc
Quote from: h106frp on July 20, 2015, 09:58:36 AM
I have decent broadband with low ping so i do not think that would be a problem. Upload bandwidth might be an issue as its typically 1/10th of the download bandwidth with my ISP without a special contract.
That will be the main problem IMO. Could work if you're on optical fiber though.
Else, let a true dedicated server do the job (typically they have good network).
MaX.
Currently i am on fibre 30M down 3M up, pretty steady connection and decent server ping. The default 1/10th up is a pain though as upping the download significantly has very limited impact on the upload speed.
I was just thinking that i do not see many servers listed, only 3 or 4 generally, 2 of these are Victoria (limited bike selection) and the other 2 are usually race practice sessions - am i missing something?. Be nice to have some 'fun' servers for fooling around on with the MOD packs and a few other bikes circulating.
Quote from: h106frp on July 20, 2015, 10:41:44 AM
I was just thinking that i do not see many servers listed, only 3 or 4 generally, 2 of these are Victoria (limited bike selection) and the other 2 are usually race practice sessions - am i missing something?.
All the servers are listed here: http://stats.gp-bikes.com/servers.php?sort=name (http://stats.gp-bikes.com/servers.php?sort=name)
Likely, you're missing tracks.
MaX.
I've been testing a server using a pc with at least 10 years (512 of ram ddr), a crap of pc, and it does his job quite well. max riders online were 8 i think and no lags no high pings, the crashes look good (no bikes flying weird on crashes).
As max says the thing here is the connection you have. In my case 300 down 30 up.
Thanks for linking that; Its mainly tracks i have not downloaded :( I will try testing on a few and see which ones are fun to ride with the bike choices available.
Thanks Loopateli, it seems that from a hardware point of view pretty much anything would work. I have some old PC stuff from gaming rigs mainly old Q6600 stuff which is power hungry and noisy compared to modern processors.
Compared to 10 year old stuff it seems a low end AMD A series might be a good contender or even possibly an E series or old laptop.
It would be interesting to see a log of network load when hosting a session. 300/30 is very high, 150/15 is probably top end in the UK and most people i know struggle to get the high end packages to deliver that bandwidth reliably.
The fact that the processing of the data is not loading up an older PC might suggest that not a lot of data is actually moving around and the bulk physics processing is on the clients. A reliable ping might be more important.
One thought, do you need a second license key for the server?
Quote from: h106frp on July 20, 2015, 12:02:05 PM
One thought, do you need a second license key for the server?
No, you don't even need one license to host a server (but you do need one to connect to a server).
MaX.
I would really appreciate if one of the current hosts could run the network traffic monitor for a while whilst hosting a few riders and post the result. I am really curious as to what level of traffic the game actually generates.
Great that hosting is license free 8)
Will do it during Race 2 on Thursday if no-one cracks it off by then H
Cheers, much needed info ;)
Quote from: Napalm Nick on July 20, 2015, 07:23:26 PM
Will do it during Race 2 on Thursday if no-one cracks it off by then H
Yes please do it, I've only values of the previous beta. ;)
Here the upload values which I found in my notes.
Very important: the ping has to stay stable and low at all loads.
Upload speed:
Players used by game (peak) recommended for beeing 100% safe
10 player - 1,0 MBit/s - 1,5 MBit/s
16 players - 2,0 MBit/s - 3,0 MBit/s
20 players - 3,0 MBit/s - 5,0 MBit/sDownload (peak): 30%-50% of upload.
Thanks dibu,
The host certainly does put quite a strain on upload speed then but with a basic UK fibre broadband package hosting 10 players does seem quite realistic. Anyone with a decent 100/10 MBit package could attempt host a full session.
The high download speeds available with most packages packages do not seem very useful in this instance.
The high upload and low download does seem to suggest the server is doing most of the game data processing. I was hoping that the heavy data processing for each bike would be on its client end and the server just passed each bikes 'pose' and position data between clients with only race management and collision detection as overheads.
@LOOPATELI, could you post the processor spec. of the 'old' PC you have been using just as a base level guide.
Thanks. :)
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 06:44:24 AM
The high upload and low download does seem to suggest the server is doing most of the game data processing. I was hoping that the heavy data processing for each bike would be on its client end and the server just passed each bikes 'pose' and position data between clients with only race management and collision detection as overheads.
The server does very little, all the physics integration is done by each client.
The data that is sent from the server to the players is (essentially) bikes' status (position, attitude, etc) + track evolution (groove).
MaX.
That's more how i expected it to be arranged.
Thinking about it i think i finally understand see where the bandwidth imbalance comes from :)
So 16 bikes feed data to the 1 server but the server repeats (uploads) 15(or 16 for integrity) bikes data to 16 different clients.
So..
16 players:
So for each 16 incoming data blocks (downstream) 256 have to be sent out (upsteam)
Scaling is harsh on the upsteam side but seems to be in line with dibu's numbers;
32 players:
So for each 32 incoming data blocks (downstream) 1024 have to be sent out (upsteam)
Twice the number of players, 2 times the download but 4 times the data to upload.
..The above is probably gibberish but it makes me feel like i am less confused :D
Had a read and apparently the reason given for poor upload bandwidth on UK cable is that they have decided that for a given copper link between user and the fibre box (docsis RF bit) most of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV channel and media (down) streaming.
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 07:21:44 AM
Thinking about it i think i finally understand see where the bandwidth imbalance comes from :)
Always better to think first :)
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 07:21:44 AM
Had a read and apparently the reason given for poor upload bandwidth on UK cable is that they have decided that for a given copper link between user and the fibre box (docsis RF bit) most of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV channel and media (down) streaming.
The reason is not really technical: the overall bandwidth is limited by the hardware, so one has to decide how to split it between download and upload.
The typical Joe needs much more download than upload, so here we go.
This is a bit less true today (with people using cloud storage, uploading a lot of crap to youtube etc), but was very very true in the past.
Anyway, you can look up what the A means in ADSL :)
MaX.
Its a shame they do not let you choose how to balance your bandwidth up/down within the total bandwidth available, I probably only use a fraction of my downstream bandwidth.
Still, a small session with 10 or 12 bikes seems perfectly feasible on domestic fibre broadband :).
Curious if something like a Gigabyte Brix with a Celeron dual core could be a low power host, quite cheap especially if you have some old memory and small SSD available.
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 07:57:30 AM
Its a shame they do not let you choose how to balance your bandwidth up/down within the total bandwidth available, I probably only use a fraction of my downstream bandwidth.
Not sure there's any technical limitation, it's probably that there's not enough people interested in that.
MaX.
HDD speed is not important. At least about 50 GB should be free for tracks, bikes, replays etc.
The CPU usage is quite low but always remember that only one core is used by the dedicated server. Some of the modern low power Celerons and Pentium might be underpowered (Thanks to Intel for their irritating naming ::)).
Haswell-Cores like the Celeron G1840 should be ok.
RAM usage mainly depends on the replay size you need. In waiting mode a dedicated server consumes 10-50 MB depending on the track. If one or more user connects, the RAM usage will increase to RAM in waiting mode + RAM you've choosen for replay.
Example for two dedicated servers and a replay size of 600 MB:
RAM for OS 1,000 MB
Server1:
RAM in waiting mode 20 MB
RAM for replay 600 MB
Server2:
RAM in waiting mode 50 MB
RAM for replay 600 MB
------------
Total RAM needed 2,270 MB
Thanks for the info on core usage. I was wary GPB might not like 'modern' processor architecture.
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 06:53:13 PM
Thanks for the info on core usage. I was wary GPB might not like 'modern' processor architecture.
Why would that be !? It runs fine on your main PC so ... at worst it can't really leverage on multiple cores/threads. But that just means you can probably run multiple servers on the same machine ;)
MaX.
Quote from: HornetMaX on July 21, 2015, 07:05:30 PM
Quote from: h106frp on July 21, 2015, 06:53:13 PM
Thanks for the info on core usage. I was wary GPB might not like 'modern' processor architecture.
Why would that be !? It runs fine on your main PC so ... at worst it can't really leverage on multiple cores/threads. But that just means you can probably run multiple servers on the same machine ;)
MaX.
Nice idea i have a Q6600 system in bit in a drawer which would be quite quick/core, but triple host would hit the upstream bandwidth problem pretty quickly lol
I was mainly curious if a modern low power micro PC would handle simple server duty. I might set up my old dual core celeron laptop as a test platform, i do not use it for anything else these days as i have a fancy works laptop instead.
Need to get up to speed with firewalls suitable for a host - any suggested reading? I guess my routers built in firewall would be considered insufficient ::)
Quick update - 8 people on my server and Network activity is 0.6Mbps lol
Thanks, that in line with dibu's figures, the problem is scaling 0.6Mbit with 8 could be 2.4Mbit with 16 players from my guesstimates earlier (no idea of fixed overheads or data packing).
Dibu's figures suggest that for 16 players its 2.0 Mbit so it's probably not quite so severe but it is very non-linear. Twice the players = 3.33 times the upload bandwidth :(
Figures seem to work out so 'simple' hosting seems possible for 12 to 16 players on a standard domestic broadband connection (fiber).
Thursday should be a good indicator if everyone turns up ;)
Here's a couple of perfmon screens from Thursdays race.
1st one is running two dedi servers same machine, 11 people on server 1, 1 on server 2
2nd is 13 on server 1 and server 2 shutdown.
RAM usage is interesting. This server has 4Gb with a dedicated GCard. Network useage is minimal. If we get +20 people on the server I will capture some more to see how exponential the use-age vs clients is.
You might need to DL and zoom them.
Hope it's useful.
Some interesting info. The high disk usage is curious in example 2 - seems to be a bit of that going around on other threads.
Network usage seems quite light.
Has made me realize i have an issue with killernetworks drivers on my game PC, seems to generate a lot of background traffic. I will have to see if it can be removed and let windows manage the traffic.
Any opinions on Atheros killernetworks? What is it doing to generate traffic?
Picked up a used one these very cheap :D
(http://www.greenit-monaco.com/gallery/q900-3.jpg)
Really impressed with it, 'proper' i3 with 4GB, a neat little machine and near silent. 8)
Will probably let it upgrade itself to win10 as a test platform before i configure it as a trial server.
If the missus does not grab it first as a replacement desktop i could be in business - i knew i had a problem when it was described as 'cute' ::) when i unpacked it though ;).