On my dedicated server, once the player count reaches around 8 to 14 players, everyone in the server starts getting massive choke spikes. Sometimes over 100 choke have been recorded, even on a LAN. What can I do to tame this?


system specs...
Intel P4 3.06ghz HT
1gb pc2100 ddr
40gb 7200rpm hdd
winxp home sp2

hlds 4120
ns 3.01


PS: I have noticed this choke problem on just about every ns 3.0 server I have visited so I don't think it's a simple hardware problem.

I see this question asked over and over, I don't think people know what "choke" means. It's not as bad as it sounds. Here's an old post from teh HLDS mailing list to which one of the dedicated server progammers responds to questions regarding choke.

http://forums.unitedadmins.com/index.php?showtopic=37231

if choke gets too high, it is a problem. it causes lag and other problems.

there are 2 problems that i see with your server though.

1) hyper threading, disable it. other people say it helps the server, but hl cant use 2 cpus, bla bla bla... it just dont work.

2) if you have any other os besides xp home, like win 2k or linux, id suggest you use that. xp home is like windows millenium, it sucks.

Well quite frankly, windows xp home and pro is just plain windows xp. There is no differance between home and pro other then pro has a few more services added to an already bloated OS. Windows 2k CAN'T use hyperthreaded processors so that's out of the question. And Linux, well as good as it can be for hosting whatever, it still can't do everything the adverage home user needs a computer for so switching linux is not an option for me.

I already know what cloke, loss and lag is and it seems that, no matter what I do with ns 3.01, the choke spikes never stop. I never had this problem with ns 3.0b4 nore does my tfc server which is running on the same machine. This leeds me to believe that either there is still something wrong with the new NS or I need to configure some my servers veriables. Any good suggestions for a 12+ player server?



PS: I forgot to mention in my first post that my server is also running..
Metamod 1.17.4
Amxmodx 1.01
whichbot 0.94g

Another difference you didn't mention between XP home and XP pro is that XP home does not support multiple processors or HT.

Now I noticed you said that it doesn't matter what server you go on, you experience the same choke problem. This leads me to believe the problem is a setting in your client, not the server(s). The fact that there are so few people complaining about the choke issue after the 3.01 patch seems to further confirm this.

Try removing your config.cfg file on your client and have NS recreate it. Don't mess with any of the settings and join a server to see if the problem still exists.

I see people tweaking things all the time on their servers and clients without knowing what they are actually tweaking. Often people think if "cl_updaterate 30" is good then "cl_updaterate 90" must be 3 times better, right? No, not always. I'm of the mind that if the defaults work, use them unless there is overwhelming evidence that something else is better.