Warp City... Petition to move server

[indian]

Skuzzy Great work  

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon
Indians Home page were links to help pages can be found.
Indian's Homepage

[Granger]

Dont move servers, worked fine before the 1.04 choked it down with everyone trying to get the 11 meg file. How bout this..
fdski has provided a mirror site. Just close down the htc site, and let us download the updates from fdski's location..maybe you guys can work somethin out with him. That way, we still get the file, and no bandwith issues from getting it from htc.

Granger

[Sharky]

Skuzzy,

I read your post and for the most part I what you wrote made sense but I do have some questions if I may.

You stated that right now bandwidth usage is higher than normal because of the downloads and that should go away in a few days.  Isn't part of this increased loading being caused, not by downloads, but by more players being in the arena and isn't that something that we should hope won't go away in the next few days?

Also I understand not paying for huge amounts of bandwidth that isn't used day to day but download rates of 1.5k/sec is just embarassing.  

Lets say Joseph L. Newby finds Aces High and decides to download it and try it out.  The first thing he runs into is a just horrible download rate.  He's spending 25-50 dollars/month on a cable modem or DSL to get a download rate of 1.5k/sec.  Not a very good introduction to HiTechCreations.  Then if he decides to tough it out through the crawling download, he logs into the arena.  He finds that in addition to a huge step up in difficult from what he is used to in ACM he finds the planes all warping across the sky.  

Now he doesn't know about ISP's only providing 70% max usage bandwith.  He doesn't know that this is being caused by huge download loading and that it will clear up.  He just knows that it was very hard to download and connection quality was very bad.  That is what his opinion of Aces High is going to be and that is what he is going to tell his friends.

I would think that having to buy more bandwidth is a good thing, as it means you have more people using your service.  I also understand that not all of them will stay for long, so it's not economically smart to add too much.  Is it possible for ISPs to provide additional bandwith for short periods ie one or two weeks during periods of expected higher than normal usage?

I'm not complaining, and I know you guys know more about this than I do, but.  If 1.04 was my first intro to Aces High, I doubt I would have stayed through the download of the FE.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Thanks,
Sharky

[Mox]

Very good post Sharky.

To Skuzzy and Dale:
If you remember Dale I live in Dallas and I'm on a direct T1 with less than 10-15 users at anytime running zero servers on it so you can say I have a lot of bandwidth to use for myself.  I've never had a connection problem reaching your server, no warps or disco's until this release.  I might have had a disco on average since beta of 1 disco a month, now I have a disco atleast 5 times a night in a 5 hour period between 5:00pm-10:00pm every single night since the patch.

The game is unplayable for me now.

Skuzzy: my ping to the server at one time was less than 8ms now it's bouncing all over the place and as high as 100ms.  The T1 I'm on is from Verio and I live in the very middle of downtown Dallas.  If I remember correctly the Verio links run to the infomart which is less than 2 miles away from me.

My link seems fine running other online games and my transfers are all well over 100K a sec as normal except for hitechcreation.com.

If there's anything you'd like me to do to help you guys get this fixed let me know because as it stands now I can't play Aces High.

Mox

[This message has been edited by Mox (edited 09-14-2000).]

[AKDejaVu]

One solution would be to farm out the FTP stuff.  I think having it share bandwidth with the game is something you should avoid at all costs.

AKDejaVu

[maik]

I was about to say the same AKDejavu  .

Maik
<JG54 Gruenherz>

[Skuzzy]

Let me say, as most of these issues are pretty much related, we (HTC/AppLink) are working on things to alleviate this situation, and when these plans are done you all will be made aware of it.

Next, bandwidth can be purchased on an as need basis, provided you have the additional free bandwidth in the telco connection to the ISP.  While the word "free" is used, it is not free.  The telephone company is going to charge you for the line whether you use it or not.

There certainly more players online than before, but we have tools that allows us to know what percentage of the bandwidth is due to players and downloads.  Right now, the download traffic, while slowing is still about half of the overall traffic.

The Verio connection is still running significantly higher than before the release of 1.04, with 70% of it being download traffic.  Add to that, we have not updated that router to a faster unit and so the Verio pipe is suffering far more than the Savvis pipe.

If we extrapolate the data to form an opinion on when things will get back to normal, I would say by this weekend, things should be close to normal.  The patch update slowed down the settling of the bandwidth crunch, but it is already trailing off significantly.

Solutions:  We are on it.  By 1.05, this will be but a bad dream never to occur again.  As we solve the problems, I will keep you informed.

With the 1.04 release, we (AppLink/HTC) had been working on the assumption that 1.04 would be a patch to 1.03, but in the final analysis, it could not be done.  Had a patch been able to do, this problem would have not been a problem and therein lies the quandry we were all caught in.  Should HT delayed the release of 1.04?  I don't think that would have been a good call.  Better to sweat out a few days of bandwidth problems than delay a major release.  Were we right or wrong?  Hindsight is a great thing, isn't it?

One thing is certain.  You cannot make hasty decisions based on unusual circumstances.  If you do, you will usually make a mistake.  Trust that this problem is going away and that we are actively pursuing options to prevent this in the future.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[iculus]

Thanks for the update Skuzzy!   It seems that many other companies would not be as open with the community.  

<S>
IC

[dudedog]

<S> Skuzzy   It sounds like you guys are acknowledging the problem and are working to resolve it. What more can we ask? My thread title was really just a bit of a troll to generate some comments. I do have one "good" suggestion. When the next ver. comes out, mirror some copies to combatsim, simhq, etc... That would alleviate some of the congestion no matter how big a pipe you guys are going to have. Also may I ask... what exactly is/was the problem, I haven't actually seen that addressed. Thanks alot for the info skuzzy, I wouldn't trade you for a 100 overpaid/underbrained network engineers  

[Fury]

I had a cable connection installed last Wednesday.

My first download was the full release of 1.03, just to see how fast it was compared to my 28.8 connection.  I was getting 10kbps/sec on Wednesday evening.

Then came 1.04.  Of course, I had to download it within 2 hours of it being released.  I was sad to find out that the best I could get was 1.5kbps and ended up downloading it from a mirror site at 13kbps.

Since loading 1.04, I have only seen warps (micro or otherwise) Friday regularly and some on Saturday.  None recently; this is all during 7pm EST to 1am EST.

When connecting to AH, the menus come up instantaneously, and I connect to the lobby much quicker.  With my 28.8, I sometimes had a 5 second wait once I hit "online".

I'm not saying there is or is not a problem somewhere, I'm simply sharing my experiences.  If I had been having problems over the last 6 days, believe me, I'd be on the Connectivity board trying to get some help.

Fury

[Skuzzy]

 

Originally posted by dudedog:
<S> Skuzzy   It sounds like you guys are acknowledging the problem and are working to resolve it. What more can we ask? My thread title was really just a bit of a troll to generate some comments. I do have one "good" suggestion. When the next ver. comes out, mirror some copies to combatsim, simhq, etc... That would alleviate some of the congestion no matter how big a pipe you guys are going to have. Also may I ask... what exactly is/was the problem, I haven't actually seen that addressed. Thanks alot for the info skuzzy, I wouldn't trade you for a 100 overpaid/underbrained network engineers  

Thank you dudedog.

The problem we faced with the release was a complete saturation of the Internet connections.  Now, I made a conscious decision, for this release, to limit the bandwidth of the downloads.  Why?  I knew that you guys would want to drive the new version as soon as you could, so we had to make sure there was enough reserve capacity for the gaming servers.  Not the most elegant solution, but it worked, as I know there were 20 pilots online Friday night who were actually managing to fly.  If I had not made the changes to limit the d/l bandwidth, no one would have been able to fly for about 6 hours.  With the cap, the pipes stayed at maximum throughput for about 8 hours.

Now, for the future, we are working on several ideas.  But, as I said before, it is too early to release any information on what we will do.  As soon as we know, and it effects you guys, we will release the information.



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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[wolf37]

hi all:

well I dont know about any of this stuff.
but one thing I do know, I am getting sick of getteing booted three or four times a night.
thats when I will log off, now I don't know about anybody else, but if it contuines, I may have to leave AH, there is no fun in flying for ten mins in a buff to bomb something, and just before reaching target, BOOT.
all it does for me is get me mad and frustered and I am not paying $30 a month for that. if it does not change and get better, I will be gone. now I know that nobody could care if I left, but how many others are feeling the same way as I feel about getting booted all the time.

now to the crew at HTC, I am not in any way trying to dump on you, I think you have all done a great job with Aces High, but this is some thing you might want to look into, (probably are ready are).

hmmmm dont know what else to say here, so I"ll leave it at this.



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wolf37
C.O.
THUNDER BIRDS

[Skuzzy]

wolf37, be happy to look into it, but if you could post a traceroute to both the main and alt connections of the arenas to the Internet forum, it would be very helpful.

You really never know what may arise from this, but I will do what I can to help.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[Thunder]

For whatever it's worth I HAD a cable modem for seven months and never had problems getting on or getting disco'd. It was great and about four weeks ago I started having disco problems on AH. This was well before 1.04. I called Dale and he ask a lot of questions and he tried everything too troubleshoot but to no avail. I later found out that Charter Cable (my Cable Company)was having some line and overload problems. I got a Concentric Connection and it got better at 56k and fewer disco's. Then trying to get it better I got a hold of applink.com as I live in Texas and its close. It is the same server and a direct connect... DAMN..... ROCK SOLID!!!! NO PROBLEMO! Unfortunately this is not a fix for most but I think that Mr. Gore's internet may be experiencing some growing pains.   WTG HTC and Appplink.. thanks  for being there to help me. You guys have a thankless job sometimes but keep it up. I like a company that is customer oriented and you guys always seem to come through for me!

Thunder

[Sharky]

Skuzzy,

Thanks for the information.  I didn't intend in my post to infer that you guys weren't doing your absolute best, because I know you are.  You guys are doing a wonderful job.  I greatly appreciate your efforts and your openness in helping to solve any problems that occur.  That kind of "open door" policy to it customers is rare in companies these days.

My only concern was how small short term problems like this can effect a new customers perception of Aces High.  Again as always your openness and candor have assured us that this was a minor problem and won't be a concern in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
Sharky