UT99 Self-hosted Server - Download speed extremely slow

[jean-jean]

Hi everyone!

I'm hosting a UT99 server on my Windows computer these last weeks and everything seems to work pretty well except one thing: the download speed for clients (including myself) joining the server. When someone needs to download new maps from the server, we experience an average download speed of 0.1% per 1-2 seconds maximum.

Of course, my internet connection is much faster than that (like >70Mbps in both download and upload). I already tried some things on the server configuration but nothing looks to work:
- I updated "ConfiguredInternetSpeed", "ConfiguredLanSpeed" and "MaxClientRate" parameters to give a higher limit
- I understood the slow speed may be caused by third-party servers that are used to download the assets (that are not directly from my computer/server). So I tried to change the "RedirectToURL" parameter with several URLs; the current parameters I use are the following:

Code: Select all

[IpDrv.HTTPDownload]
RedirectToURL=http://utredirect.org.uk/uz/
ProxyServerHost=
ProxyServerPort=3128
UseCompression=True

Unfortunately, none of these tests led to correct download speed

Do you have any idea what can cause that and/or what I can try on my side? Couldn't I avoid this third-party "RedirectToURL" thing and make the client download the assets directly from my computer?

Thank you in advance for your help

[Buggie]

Couldn't I avoid this third-party "RedirectToURL" thing and make the client download the assets directly from my computer?

Currently - no. But if you use in future v469 at server then you can serve content directly from server faster enough.

For current situation you need be sure about reachability redirect server by your clients. Also yo must be sure - all your contents present on this server with same version on .uz files.

[Barbie]

Seems the host does not exist anymore:

# nslookup www.utredirect.org.uk
*** Can't find www.utredirect.org.uk: No answer

# nslookup utredirect.org.uk
*** Can't find utredirect.org.uk: No answer

If no redirect exists the UT server itself sends files uncompressed to the clients and that's very slow as you experienced.
You have to set up a redirect web server (or use an existing one), UZ-compress all the files the clients need and upload them to the redirect server. You can either rent a cheap web server located somewhere in the internet with full 100 MBit up- and download speed or you can host it at home. But consider that the upload speed on customer's (your's) connections is usually much slower than your download speed, only 1/10 maybe. Your upload speed divided by the number of clients will be the download speed for your clients.

[Buggie]

Wow. Soon there will be complaints that UT is not working, and then we will find out that the computer was not plugged in.

[Barbie]

?

[Buggie]

Maybe I’m too demanding on people, but it seemed to me that if a person started the server, he corrected configs, meaningfully wrote, he showed by all appearance that he knew what a URL was, then he checked that the domain existed and the site existed at all.

[ShaiHulud]

Skillz over at UT-Files.com has been operating a public redirect for many years. Instructions are posted here:

https://news.ut-files.com/redirect/

For many purposes it's a great resource. There might be occasional issues with exotic server setups and more obscure files due to file corruption which can crash clients (Skillz has an automated FTP management feature that permits admins to upload new files to a holding directory. A service then moves these files over to the 'live' download directory every 15 minutes. This seems to cause problems when the service copies a file that is in the process of being uploaded. There's a forum thread for reporting corrupted files though).

Otherwise, and ahead of the future v469 build, you could use XC_Engine, Higor's drop-in replacement for some core UT files, which includes an option to remove the hardcoded download speed restriction.

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=13504&hilit=cx_engine

The files and options might seem a little overwhelming at first. Basically you'll need to put everything in the System folder into your UT server's System folder: for Windows servers all DLL files, for Linux servers all SO files, and then all U fiels for either. Then you need to modify your UnrealTournament.ini file:

[Engine.Engine]
...
;GameEngine=Engine.GameEngine
GameEngine=XC_Engine.XC_GameEngine


And then you need a new section, into which you paste everything from the [Engine.Engine] section - plus any additional XC_Engine options that you want to enable/disable. I think the one added below is what you'll be interested in. This is off-of-the-top-of-my-head so can't guarantee it's entirely comprehensive.

[XC_Engine.XC_GameEngine]
bFasterUpload=true

[Buggie]

Well, XC_Engine is not true solution because solve problem only for this client.

I think he want solve problem for all players on his server.

[ShaiHulud]

Well, XC_Engine is not true solution because solve problem only for this client.
I think he want solve problem for all players on his server.

Hmm, I think we might be misconstruing one another here. I use XC_Engine on our Bunnytrack server for this purpose, and it works reasonably well - big maps can still a bit of a wait for players, you really appreciate compression for anything over 20MB or so.

What I mean is, all connecting clients benefit from the faster server downloads without anything having to change on the client end. You just need to add the "bFasterUpload" value to the server's UT.ini file for this to come into effect.

[Que]

if you add -lanplay to your server-start line then you should experience faster uploads without the need for a redirect server.

Code: Select all

cd System

:top
ucc server DM-Tutorial.unr?Game=Botpack.DeathMatchPlus?Mutator= ini=UnrealTournament.ini log=server.log -lanplay
copy server.log server-crash.log
goto top

use in conjunction with Skillz Redirect Server;

Code: Select all

[IpDrv.HTTPDownload]
RedirectToURL=http://uz.ut-files.com/
ProxyServerHost=
ProxyServerPort=3128
UseCompression=True

[IpDrv.TcpNetDriver]
AllowDownloads=True
MaxDownloadSize=0
DownloadManagers=IpDrv.HTTPDownload
DownloadManagers=Engine.ChannelDownload

[jean-jean]

Hi everyone,

Thank's a lot for your help

If no redirect exists the UT server itself sends files uncompressed to the clients and that's very slow as you experienced.

You're right Barbie, it would have been a good idea to check that on my side before using this URL as a redirect one on my server. But despite the several URLs I tried (with some that were fully working), slow download speed persisted.

Skillz over at UT-Files.com has been operating a public redirect for many years. Instructions are posted here:

Thanks ShaiHulund for this redirect URL! I'll try that along with XC_Engine to see if that makes the difference

I think he want solve problem for all players on his server.

Yep definitely Buggie!

if you add -lanplay to your server-start line then you should experience faster uploads without the need for a redirect server.

Que, that seems to be a good idea. However I wonder if this -lanplay will only affect my LAN or will it also allow a "local" server for distant clients?

More generally, I think I understood that the download speed really relies on this "redirectToUrl": so if I setup a small FTP server with all required files I should be fine with this issue I guess
Just to clarify, I'm not running a big UT99 server with tens of players nor a LAN server, it's basically a private server we're playing on with max 5-10 friends.

Thanks again for all these ideas, I'll keep you updated once I tried that

[ShaiHulud]

More generally, I think I understood that the download speed really relies on this "redirectToUrl": so if I setup a small FTP server with all required files I should be fine with this issue I guess

Good thought! Though UT redirect files are hosted via a HTTP server - but you could definitely set up a compact HTTP server on your PC and serve the redirect files from that. I don't know what the best candidate would be for this. Certainly Apache would be massive overkill for such purposes. Maybe TinyWeb or Abyss, or something similar.

[sektor2111]

Well, XC_Engine is not true solution because solve problem only for this client.

Then read what XC_Engine thread says about that. Else it is mainly causing a HIGHER speed than usual speed provided by server using a direct download available for all sort of Clients. Of course XC_Clients might be served with LZMA files (more or less from server directly)- smaller and faster to process in all ways. The only issue is that server must have certain features disabled because... they are still "young" and I don't see any recent work around for making them more "wise", actually demotivating me a bit for making intensively XC mods... but UT436/451 + XCGE21/24 can actually solve more problems toward stability.
To not forget my loved point, XCGE24 has a bigger power at DevPath, you can play with Bots MH maps which actually doesn't work for Bots in plain UT or they work with flaws spamming logs...

[Buggie]

Hmm. I thought it is client-side limitation and can not be fixed by XC_Engine on server-side only. Obviously I am was wrong. My apologize for this.