Jagex's World to Server Ratio

[RSBDavid]

So there are currently 175 or so worlds. Jagex runs all of these on 25 commercial servers(this was stated by CEO Mark Gerhard at JavaOne), specifically all dells.

 

This is equal to 7 worlds per server.

 

Don;t get me wrong, that is an amazing feat, but is it too much? Thanks to the load on the servers from all of the worlds, some of the worlds, specifically player-vs-Player, are very laggy. I know this is not my connection, I have a 100 ms latency max and 6MB download and 3MB upload speed. Is it too much to ask them to put high traffic worlds on single servers? I wouldn't mind paying an extra couple of dollars per-month.

 

This is really irritating me.

[Kenshinjapan]

I would mind that extra for a few worlds that I never use. Also, I doubt that it's because of the number of worlds on each server that's making it laggy. I'm sure there are many more factors that come into play.

[Sy_Accursed]

commercial server is not the same as a server.

 

A server is like a single computer acting as a server.

A commercial server is anything between a little cupboard thingy of about 10 computers to an entire room of them.

 

So in literal terms they will have 1 server per world, but several servers make up 1 commercial server.

[sees_all1]

So there are currently 175 or so worlds. Jagex runs all of these on 25 commercial servers(this was stated by CEO Mark Gerhard at JavaOne), specifically all dells.

 

This is equal to 7 worlds per server.

 

Don;t get me wrong, that is an amazing feat, but is it too much? Thanks to the load on the servers from all of the worlds, some of the worlds, specifically player-vs-Player, are very laggy. I know this is not my connection, I have a 100 ms latency max and 6MB download and 3MB upload speed. Is it too much to ask them to put high traffic worlds on single servers? I wouldn't mind paying an extra couple of dollars per-month.

 

This is really irritating me.

Sounds like this makes it very cheap to operate a single world.

Haven't they identified the server locations on the non-themed worlds? Are there really just 25 of these?

Seems like they've nearly got one for each state, and one for several countries.

 

I wonder if there are other ways they can prevent bottleneck... this also gets back to the major interwebz backbones increasing their bandwidth.

[RSBDavid]

I know the difference between a home server and public server. I own several blade, standalone, and rack mount servers.

 

Even if each serve had dual quad-core processors and 8GB of ram, if the ISP they use has horrible service for international connections, the server won;t do much good.

 

Here is the source for the dell server statement: ( it states 200 servers, but he means worlds.)

http://takeyourownpath.co.uk/trailblazers/mark-gerhard-jagex-game-studio.aspx

 

and here is a video and at around 7:15 is when he states they use 25 servers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfg73DE7iv0

[Sy_Accursed]

Again I state

 

he says 25 COMMERCIAL SERVERS

 

A commercial server is an interlinked bundle of servers that can be anything up to like 100 individual servers that are group managed.

 

So in LITERAL terms there is one actual psychical server per world

[RSBDavid]

Again I state

 

he says 25 COMMERCIAL SERVERS

 

A commercial server is an interlinked bundle of servers that can be anything up to like 100 individual servers that are group managed.

 

So in LITERAL terms there is one actual psychical server per world

Ok you might be right.

 

So where is the lag coming from? Is it their ISP?

[Sy_Accursed]

could be any number of things.

 

Phone lines, ISP, all the servers you bounce through at some point.

 

Any one of them can be laggy.

[RSBDavid]

could be any number of things.

 

Phone lines, ISP, all the servers you bounce through at some point.

 

Any one of them can be laggy.

 

Every non-pvp server I visit never lags. Hell, even the high traffic market servers like World 2 rarely lag if not lag at all.

 

Don;t they keep all of the servers in the UK? Wouldn't it be feasible to rent some in the United States?

[Sy_Accursed]

No there are servers all over the world, themed ones however they dont show where they are.

 

You jsut have to check the "ping" column for lower numbers to get lag free worlds, i personally have some decent pvp worlds. If they all have bad ping for you its just bad luck

[RSBDavid]

No there are servers all over the world, themed ones however they dont show where they are.

 

You jsut have to check the "ping" column for lower numbers to get lag free worlds, i personally have some decent pvp worlds. If they all have bad ping for you its just bad luck

 

 

The ping says 65-85 normally for each pvp world and around 50 for non-pvp world.

[Sy_Accursed]

That sounds like you just have bad connection period.

 

On my world list I always have 5 or 6 worlds under 10 ping

Then about 70% are 10 - 30 ping

30+ ping is when you start getting into a bit of lag with it getting worse as ping goes up.

Then I cap out at like 120 ping on most Indian worlds

 

But the good worlds vary a lot including all sorts of different themed worlds, if you at 50+ no matter what it shows something is up with you connecting to runescape servers. You probably notice it more on pvp worlds as your ping is a bit higher on them AND they tend to have larger crowds whihc do create lag (eg even with a ping of 5 you can lag at a busy GE)

[RSBDavid]

In World of Warcraft, I always have a 200ms ping at high traffic areas and I lag a lot less. Blizzard probably has better servers.

[Sy_Accursed]

Its not at all neccessarily related to the servers.

 

When connecting to anything on the web you have to bounce thru tones of switch stations and servers and all sorts.

 

All it means is somewhere along the line your route to the rs servers u go through a bad line or server or w/e

[Me_Hate_Libs]

If that's the case Paw then all of Pinellas County, Florida has a bad connection because no matter where I go, and who's computer I use, I cannot get anything under 70 Ping.

[mister_moocky]

Every since the BA updates world 6 has been having spurts of a 1-3 second freezing felt by all players. It's annoying especially for defenders.

[Sy_Accursed]

Its all in the routing and in USA especially large areas seem to bulk route to certain routes, so all you need is 1 shoddy connection, phone line or server along the way and that can muck up all your pings.

 

I mean my net here in halls is 1mb/s shared between like 100+ people and even at a seem bad time and I can still easily get pings of 10 - 20

[Mischlings]

Its all in the routing and in USA especially large areas seem to bulk route to certain routes, so all you need is 1 shoddy connection, phone line or server along the way and that can muck up all your pings.

 

I mean my net here in halls is 1mb/s shared between like 100+ people and even at a seem bad time and I can still easily get pings of 10 - 20

 

I can't find a dorm in the University of Michigan that gives me less than a 73 ping to any world using an ethernet connection. I have no idea how you get pings of 10-20, nor do I have a clue why mine is never lower.

 

I still never notice bad lag unless I'm in a really crowded area like the GE on a full world -- so whatever they have, in my opinion, seems to be working just fine.

[Capone_Sabre]

My connection isn't particularly great as I live in a rural area but there are always worlds with less than 40 ping, on a good day it's in the 20s on most European worlds. I never lag.

 

Although I only live about 80 miles from Jagex HQ, for some reason the Dutch servers seem to have the lowest ping.

[SportsGuy]

My ping rates went from high 70s at best to low 90s recently. Did anyone else notice recent changes?

[CaJ]

I've had ping rates in the 800s-900s.

[pulli23]

They way RS checks ping isn't really "good": it only sends out 4 ping messages and averages these.

 

 

This is very error prone thanks to the randomness of the internet (a message might -in a certain case- be blocked for the shortest way and thus increasing the time)... A continious ping would be necessary to calculate lag (as well as a packet loss test/bandwidth test) from the players perspective. With rs' build in lag-test you will see spikes (mostly upwards though).

 

On the other hand, even FPS games are easily playable in the 80 ms ping region: that's less than 1/10th of a second "lag" you might experience. RS has a 0.6 second "game clock", meaning only once every 0.6 seconds you actually send a stream of packages to the server. Thus the ping wouldn't really matter much (since you're slowed down by the game clock anyways).. As long as the ping is below 300 one shouldn't notice any difference!

 

Also, a ping between 5-20 is normal for LAN connections..

 

For "local" (close as in amsterdam to berlin), you'll often be looking at 30-150 ms ping..

Overseas, (like from west europe to the UK) it'll be in the vincity of 100-200 ms

And the far-regions you'll be looking at 150-500 ms. (higher than 500 ms should be considered a broken connection nowadays)

 

Notice that these aren't "definite" values, as we all know a packet isn't specified a certain route to follow.. Rather if it comes to a "hub" that hub looks at all connected hubs, and forwards the package to all those hubs it considers "possible in the right direction". As a introduction test for CS we were asked to check which places our ping package went through.. When pinging the University of Eindhoven from the University of Delft: one of the student's ping message went through Delphi!

 

 

But anyways, I mostly get 30-70 ping on the RS servers.. (at least those in europe). And that's even with my glass fibre connection (100MBit up/down)

[CaJ]

You are very lucky man...

 

Over here in America we aren't so lucky. A good number of people are still using Dial-Up and DSL over a copper wire, and I am struggling to find a Internet service that allows me to play Runescape smoothly in the highest detail.

 

We also have to worry about capped Internet. If you are say, over 7 GB of bandwidth, the Internet service shuts off your connection as a result of violations.

[RSBDavid]

 

 

We also have to worry about capped Internet. If you are say, over 7 GB of bandwidth, the Internet service shuts off your connection as a result of violations.

 

Maybe Obama-Broad Band will fix that. People on welfare will get free unlimited broadband internet and it will be available to the rest of the world at a small price.

[unjustblood]

Remember what they said the RSOF server was run off?

I think Jagex knows what they are doing. Good business sense too would say that you don't need to buy more servers, you need to improve the game architecture and buy the more advanced technology for said servers as it comes out.