Server Lag

[asviola]

I recently turned my old tower into a server. It has a 1.5 ghz p4 processor, 768 mb of ram, 100 fps, and a 2600KB upload speed.

I set the max players to 24 and started a game. It works fine when I play, but once we got up to 6 players in the server, people started complaining about lag. Now I know this isn't the best thing to run a server on, but shouldn't it be able to handle more than 6 players without lagging? Is it because the tick rate is at 33, or someone using up all the bandwidth, or is this tower just not good enough to run a server?

[Spartanfrog]

1.5 ghz processor......dude get a new one lol.

[asviola]

well that's why I got a new computer, because that one was so old. I thought it would be good enough for a server though.

[Drocona]

That computer should be able to handle 20 slots at 33 tick for sure, what is causing the lag? (look at the net_graph in game)

[asviola]

okay I set the max players to 20. and in game I typed net_graph 1. Now what exactly am I looking for that would indicate the cause of lag?

By the way, do I have to set a max bandwidth on the server, if that could have any effect on lag.

[asviola]

Okay, I looked at net_graph 2 and I definately see a lot of spiking, but I also see this spiking in other servers where I experience no lag. But, I also see that when people join the server their pings start out high and then decrease to normal, but they spike sometimes.

[Drocona]

Look at the:
ping
choke
loss
in

[Spartanfrog]

Yeah sorry I should have actually said what it would run XD. I just meant it was really old . What is the CPU usage?

[asviola]

CPU usage is not high.

ping is between 0 and 10. Usually 5

right now I'm playing with one other person and his ping is 996 for some reason. We're playing melee mountain and the in is around 100 as well as the out, but when the intel spawns the in climbs up to 500 20 k/s while the out stays around 100 2 k/s.

Loss and choke are 0.

I also notice the net graph jump and spike pretty high (especially the red) with more people.

I don't know if the max and min bandwidth rate has any effect on it, but it was originally set to 0 min and 20000 max, so I changed it to unlimited max and 20000 or so min to try to fix the lag.

Or maybe it's the fact that I'm sharing the internet connection my server uses to play the game on this computer?

[asviola]

Here I took a picture of the net_graph when I joined my server (this happens when the intel spawns on meleemountain). I was the only one in the server when I took this picture. I'll take another one when I get people on again.



Here's a link to the page if you can't see it well enough http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p261/Tucker_lord11/Serverlag.jpg

[Drocona]

Nothing wrong on that picture

[asviola]

So red should be engulfing the graph like that?

[Filoret]

more importent is loss and choke is't about 0

[asviola]

I got a game going with 6 people, and everyone's ping (except mine) would spike like that in the picture, then it would go back to normal. What would cause this, a firewall? Because I did forward port 2075 or 2015 or whatever number it is.

[Drocona]

That happens when there's insufficient upload bandwidth available.