rate values. . .

[dualcore1289]

so, what exactly determines the sv_minrate and sv_maxrate?

[blik]

The values you asign to them? (duh?)

[dualcore1289]

no, really? man i would have never known. . . but no really, what determins the value that you put in?

[dualcore1289]

does the maxrate depend on your bandwidth? if so, how do you determine to set the value?

[Drocona]

Well to be completely honest these rate settings are bullcrap

They were made to limit the maximum amount of bandwidth one player uses to the given amount, so sv_maxrate would depend on the total amount of bandwidth available.
However, the purpose was to set them in a way that the server wouldn't lag due to low bandwidth availability (like 14 players on 1mbit would be 1024*128/14 = 9362 sv_maxrate). This actually limits the bandwidth of one player to 9.362 KB/s. Now here's the problem, when the bandwidth per player sticks below this amount your server will run fine, but what's the use of a max then right. When players need more bandwidth than this value, PROBLEMS! Your server starts building up choke and eventually the tickrate will drop and you've guessed it... LAG anyway.

So basically the rates are completely useless, you just need enough bandwidth available and set the maxrates to the actual max of 30000 since limiting it will lag your server anyways.

sv_minrate.... I don't know, never got what it did, when you set a minrate of 10000 it suggests that the clients should be using up at least 10KB/s per slot but that's not the case, they will use 3KB/s if they want to.

So yeah, just have enough bandwidth and let the server use what it needs to.

[dualcore1289]

ok ty drocona

[css]

Drocona Wrote:sv_minrate.... I don't know, never got what it did, when you set a minrate of 10000 it suggests that the clients should be using up at least 10KB/s per slot but that's not the case, they will use 3KB/s if they want to.

I've been puzzled by this too, but some time ago I realized that it's just the recommendation what value the "rate" CVAR setting the player should have. Sv_minrate sets the recommended minimum and sv_maxrate the maximum. The "rate" CVAR limits the maximum amount of data sent by a player, so the server can force all players to have some reasonably high "rate" CVAR (or reasonably low, which is bad anyway). Obviously if players want to send less, they can do it.

The minimum length of any command packet is about 30-35 bytes (based on my own research, and I don't remember whether it includes UDP headers ). On a 66 tick server this means all players will (try to) send 66 updates per second. Idling player will thus send 30 bytes * 66 = 2.3kB/s. This apparently stupid way of flooding "I'm doing nothing" no-content packets probably helps the server to do better interpolation.

Everybody on Linux server with root access can see what size (length) the command packets are by executing the following command:

Code:

tcpdump -n 'port 27015'

It outputs lots of stuff, but that's because all players send 66 updates per second and it fills the screen pretty quick. Use ctrl-c to stop it.