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Jul 19, 2003, 12:38pm

Call this a bug, hidden feature, or just a simple oversight, but I found
something interesting when using the world server's remote admin tool.
If you login to it remotely and try to save a propdump of a very large
world (say, over 100,000 objects in a world), it'll take a while to send
all of that data to the user over the Net. So guess what happens?

There is no limit in the admin tool to only transfer at a certain speed,
so most of your upstream bandwidth is being used to send the propdump
and there is hardly any "left over" for the users/bots in a world.
Someone has tested this with a popular world and it ate up so much
bandwidth that it kicked everyone from the world and showed it as
offline in the worlds list until the propdump was done being sent! O_O
One might even go so far as to classify this as a denial of service
attack of sorts.

A simple "transfer limit" feature in Kbps or something in the admin tool
or as a setting in the .INI would be nice. You could limit it to like
1/2 or 1/3 of your total upstream bandwidth so this wouldn't happen. It
would still send the propdump fine, just slower.

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

Jul 19, 2003, 12:40pm

Doesn't your host have like a huge ammount of bandwidth?

Jul 19, 2003, 12:55pm

But still if the guy at the other end is fast enough it can still rip
though. I agree though for me on a lower upload speed i wouldn't like to use
the remote tool if it does that. Id rather stick to terminal services

Jul 19, 2003, 1:15pm

I didn't say I was talking about 3D HOst inparticular -- it was another
host. I don't want to mention which host or which world it was (at least
not right now), I'm just stating that it is a flaw in the admin tool.
Take this as an example:

Say you are hosting a very popular public building world with 100,000
objects in it on a 128Kbps upstream broadband connection. Someone on a
T1 (1.544 Mbps) or a fast downstream broadband connection (768Kbps)
downloads the propdump via the remote admin tool. Well, they will be
able to use up your entire 128Kbps upstream to download the propdump
until it has successfully been sent in full, kicking the users from the
world and taking it off of the worlds list because there is no bandwidth
left over for anything else.

If the admin tool on the server side could be set to a limit, say 64Kbps
upstream (50% of the host's total upstream bandwidth in this example),
then things would be much better. Sure, the propdump would take a bit
longer to download, but you'd just need to be patient or make propdumps
less often. This "bug" won't work with dial-up users (in most cases)
because their transfer speeds are so slow that it won't effect the host.

It isn't really a problem with attribute or terrain data since most of
that is very small, and it only effects worlds with lots of objects in
them. So unless you have an extremely large world with lots of objects,
have access to the remote admin tool, do a remote propdump, and your
host doesn't have a very fast connection to the Net -- then it isn't a
problem for you. :)

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

[View Quote]

Jul 19, 2003, 1:22pm

See my reply to your other post. Also, the same effect can happen if you
are uploading a very large file to an FTP server, uploading/sharing
files over a P2P network -- or just about anything that uses most or all
of a host's upstream bandwidth. If a host's server is in a data center
with a 2Mbps or higher connection and there is little upstream activity,
then the problem wouldn't matter. However, there may be quite a few
people who host their own world on their own dial-up or broadband
connections and may allow remote admin access to others -- that's why I
wanted to point this out. It may not effect very many people, but it is
still an oversight, IMO. Of course, you can always turn off remote admin
support as well.

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

[View Quote]

Jul 19, 2003, 1:58pm

You will always have this problem if you run a server
that is slower than even one single client.

The admin tool has to have a higher priority on the world
server than any client because it is an admin tool. If
I am admin on a web server I expect to be treated with
a higher priority than the web clients too.

Compressing the data (gzip / pkzip) reduces the amount
of data by 8 and would sure help but I think it is not
a problem of the world server to ballance the load in
this case. The line is just too slow to handle the
required data rate in this case.

Maybe announce the administration mode before you start
so the visitors will know what's going on.

Jul 19, 2003, 3:17pm

True, you could use the broadcast feature or other means to warn users
in the world before doing it, but I still think it would be nice to
somehow "cap" the transfer limit. Most FTP servers have the option of
using transfer limits, so why can't the admin tool or world server have
that option? Also, most game servers allow you to specify how much data
can be sent per player. I know admin tool and world server are a bit
different, but I don't think it would be very hard to add.

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

[View Quote]

Jul 20, 2003, 7:17pm

I just found a handy program called NetLimiter
(http://www.netlimiter.com) that can limit both upstream and downstream
bandwidth on a per program basis for Windows. Used in conjunction with
the admin tool on a Windows host, this should help resolve the problem I
talked about in my original post.

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

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