Network Overload

[Hasler]

I created a battalion sized mission for my friends. Half way through I started receiving Network overload messages. One of my players reported that they could not command their units, and another reported that they were lagged to the point that they could not enter their sights. My third player and I had no issues. I am trying to track down the root cause before I make the follow on missions. So I have a few questions.

 

1. Was a battalion Sized mission too big for a normal PC host?

2. My upload speed is clocked between 25-30 Mbps is that enough band width for a large mission?

3. Was this a client issue and not a host issue?

4. Is there something else I am not thinking about?

 

Any help getting this smoothed out would be appreciated.

 

[Gibsonm]

So what sort of Internet connection does the person who had issues have?

 

Is your connection (and the person who was fine) better than the one who had issues?

 

e.g. are you two on fibre and the other person on a 3G hotspot?

 

As usual, the more detail you provide initially, the better the guesses will be.

[Ssnake]

The session host should, ideally, have an upstream bandwidth of about 300kBit/sec per connected client. Steel Beasts manages with about half of that. With a typical DSL connection you may get 16 MBit/s downstream, but your upload bandwith is much lower, maybe one or two MBit/s ... which, incidentally, is sufficient for about eight players in total.

So, my first the question would be whether your network connection would provide sufficient bandwidth for the number of connected clients that you had?

[Hasler]

Everyone is on cable internet. I am usually the host for all of our various games because my Internet is 300Mbps down and 30 up. My player that had no problems actually had the worst internet at 50/10. The one that lost control of his units has 150/20 and the one that couldn't enter his sights has 80/10. Everyone is wired to their modems.

 

My PC has a 3770K @ 4.5 with a 1080

The player that reported no issues has a 6850K @4.2 with a 1080

The player that lost control has a 6700K with a 980

The one that could not enter his sights has an AMD potato build(It may have just been his PC bogging down)

 

The map it self was modified to mimic as close as possible to the solona reservoir area of Ukraine. It has about 8 small cities, farm fields, hedgerows and forests as seen on areal photos. Units in the mission were accurate to the TOE for the 74 Motor rifle brigade, and Sabre Squadron 2/3 ACR -43rd CEC as of 2010. Roughly 300 vehicles between Red and Blue.

It worked great in Single player testing with only minor frame drops after significant shelling of the cities.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Hasler
missing word

[Rotareneg]

Use ALT-F12 to display debugging info, including network bitrates.

[Hasler]

I will try it out this weekend when I can get everyone together for a test with the debug open and see if I can mine anymore data.

[Gibsonm]

11 hours ago, Hasler said:

Roughly 300 vehicles between Red and Blue.

 

That's a pretty big "battalion Sized mission".

[Hasler]

That's what happens when you use a full US ACR Squadron(battalion level command)TOE. 42 Tanks 40 Bradley's, 6 palis, 6 mortars, and support vehicles just on blue. Designed to fight an entire Russian brigade unsupported by corps. 

[Gibsonm]

Yes I know what an ACR is (I was lucky enough to spend some time with the Brave Rifles while it was still "heavy").

 

My point it an ACR Sqn vs a Soviet Bn  = 80 US AFV vs 50 odd Soviet AFV which is a lot less than the 300 you mentioned.

 

If the ACR Sqn is fighting a Soviet Regiment / Russian Brigade then sure you approach 300 vehicles but its no longer a "Battalion mission", unless you mean from the point of view that the US ACR Sqn is approx US, non ACR, Battalion strength.

[Hasler]

It was conceptualize as a Squadron Defense and counter attack. So Battalion level mission for blue. Probably just a semantic argument or difference in terms. We always did mission size naming by the size of the tasked Blue element. A platoon may fight a company but it was still a Platoon attack or defense.

Edited November 9, 2016 by Hasler

[Volcano]

So was it a regimental sized unit on Red? If so, then that sized unit will not really work unless the HOST has an exceptional connection.  Some people can host a mission that sized, but most cannot.

 

One thing you can do is have the battalions of the regiment spawn after some time when the first battalion would be dead or nearly dead. This helps reduce a great deal of network traffic if Red comes at you in waves. Even with the fastest network connection for the HOST, we found it best for all CLIENTs if we had the regiment show up in waves like this.