Server Hosting: Tips and Tricks!

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Vertz1515

Vertz1515

Just another SRB2 research guy.
Greetings! I'm excited to share that I've embarked on a new project—a YouTube video aimed at assisting newcomers in navigating the world of server hosting. Over time, I've received numerous requests to create a tutorial on this topic, and I'm thrilled to finally delve into it. My objective is to provide more than just the essentials such as port forwarding, placing your server on the MS, and using dedicated servers. I want to offer a comprehensive guide that goes beyond the basics, ensuring that viewers gain a thorough understanding of SRB2 server hosting in its entirety, and what does / doesn't work.

While researching existing resources, I can't help but feel like I noticed a gap in the information available online. Specifically, there seems to be a lack of guidance on acquiring broader knowledge of SRB2 server hosting beyond the initial setup phase, which could leave you learning through trial and error. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate anyone here who regularly hosts servers to post their own suggestions on how to accomplish server hosting effectively. Whether it's sharing useful commands, optimizing server performance, recommending mods that can enhance the server experience, or discussing ideal setups for 24/7 server operation (an area I haven't explored extensively). Your input would be much appreciated.

Additionally, I'm keen to explore the topic of preventing server crashes, as my past experience has typically involved hosting servers until they inevitably crash. Therefore, any tips related to maintaining server stability would be tremendously helpful.

To give you an idea of what I've already planned to cover, some of the topics on my list include:
  • Using Server Logins
  • Knowing Basic Server Commands (Mostly From The Console Commands Wiki Page)
  • Addon Limits and Restrictions
  • Optimally Initializing Your Server
  • Setting Your Server Name Using Colors
  • Creating Your Own Server Specific Addons (Also Open To Requests)
I hope to see some of your own contributions soon. Thanks a ton!
 
Im glad someone did this,as this is going to be the DEFNITIVE guide for making 2.2 servers. I could look out if making a server is also possible for Android,but we'll wait for your tutorial to come out first and see if it is... :P
 
RedSRB2 said:
Im glad someone did this,as this is going to be the DEFNITIVE guide for making 2.2 servers. I could look out if making a server is also possible for Android,but we'll wait for your tutorial to come out first and see if it is... :P
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Hosting on Android is actually possible, I've even seen some people host servers on the MS this way before. I would recommend keeping a good eye on your internet strength though, most Android based servers I've joined are quite laggy.
 
Vertz1515 said:
Hosting on Android is actually possible, I've even seen some people host servers on the MS this way before. I would recommend keeping a good eye on your internet strength though, most Android based servers I've joined are quite laggy.
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Oh,i didnt knew that your servet relies on your Wi-Fi strength (and i will mention it in the tutorial)! I might release the tutorial before your tutorial comes out,but thats just  maybe.
 
It don't rely on wifi strength that much as you can host on wifi just fine.
It depends on your internet stability and how powerful the hosting server is. Best is fiber but ADSL work if there's a low enough number of players, you don't enable mod downloading and your internet isn't too busy(3G and 4G probably don't work well because they aren't stable enough but I don't think you can host on either).

I think it can be nice to do a guide. Perhaps not a video but on the guide section of the MB. Too many server are badly configured(what is downloadspeed?).
 
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I guess I'm experienced. Here's my advice that I want to give to everyone who hosts servers. If someone can't join because the game tells them they don't have the files to join, increase maxsend (in the server). Also, in port forwarding, and I haven't known this for pretty much a year now and only found out because of an obscure website linked on the SRB2 wiki, because no tutorials anywhere online say anything about it for some strange reason: make sure that if your ISP has an "External IP" or "External Host" value, set it to "*" instead of your public ip. A lot of misinformation online (it's EVERYWHERE) says that value is supposed to be filled in with what public ip you are hosting the server on, but it actually specifies what IPs can connect to the server. By setting it to *, or simply leaving it blank, you specify ALL ips, which is what you're going for. I feel like a lot of people have probably gotten stuck on this.
 
Lamibe said:
Perhaps not a video but on the guide section of the MB.
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Well,im obviously going to make it as a guide section,because i dont have a YouTube channel. However,im only going to make it when Vertz's tutorial comes first,as it would be some sort of a foundation.
 
Lamibe said:
It don't rely on wifi strength that much as you can host on wifi just fine.
It depends on your internet stability and how powerful the hosting server is. Best is fiber but ADSL work if there's a low enough number of players, you don't enable mod downloading and your internet isn't too busy(3G and 4G probably don't work well because they aren't stable enough but I don't think you can host on either).

I think it can be nice to do a guide. Perhaps not a video but on the guide section of the MB. Too many server are badly configured(what is downloadspeed?).
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Download speed is how fast your internet can download files, load webpages, and other online activities. For example, if you have Project+ downloading and you have 300/mbps (megabytes per second), and it's 1.6 GB, you would have it downloaded faster. Pretty neat but simple explanation, huh?
 
pompom454 said:
Download speed is how fast your internet can download files, load webpages, and other online activities. For example, if you have Project+ downloading and you have 300/mbps (megabytes per second), and it's 1.6 GB, you would have it downloaded faster. Pretty neat but simple explanation, huh?
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That's an oversimplification and the units are incorrect, sorry. Download "speed" isn't really speed per se, it's bandwidth — how fat the connection between the computer to the ISP is. When there's more data than the connection can transmit per a unit of time, there have to be multiple rounds to transmit the data in parts, which means that it loads less quickly. There's other factors affecting speed, like latency for example; not every activity needs to transmit huge amounts of data. Different activities depend on different factors, sometimes also a combination of them, which is why certain activities can be fast while others slow, with the same connection. Certain webpages, for example, might load very slowly because they do many requests, and many requests make lots of round trips, which are affected by bad latency. Other webpages could contain huge images for example, that need spare unused bandwidth to load. SRB2 is affected by bandwidth when sending missing addons to connecting players, and once in-game, is affected by latency, jitter, packet loss, and other metrics and almost not at all by bandwidth.
Mbps stands for megabits per second, not megabytes per second (which would be shortened to MBps and isn't a common measurement of bandwidth). Also, Windows and many other software programs count units of kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes (multiples of 1024) while misleadingly displaying them as kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes (multiples of 1000). (EDIT: For example: 1.600 GiB = 1.718 GB = 13,744 megabits. 300 megabits = 37.5 MB = 35.763 MiB.)
 
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Watermelon said:
That's an oversimplification and the units are incorrect, sorry. Download "speed" isn't really speed per se, it's bandwidth — how fat the connection between the computer to the ISP is. When there's more data than the connection can transmit per a unit of time, there have to be multiple rounds to transmit the data in parts, which means that it loads less quickly. There's other factors affecting speed, like latency for example; not every activity needs to transmit huge amounts of data. Different activities depend on different factors, sometimes also a combination of them, which is why certain activities can be fast while others slow, with the same connection. Certain webpages, for example, might load very slowly because they do many requests, and many requests make lots of round trips, which are affected by bad latency. Other webpages could contain huge images for example, that need spare unused bandwidth to load. SRB2 is affected by bandwidth when sending missing addons to connecting players, and once in-game, is affected by latency, jitter, packet loss, and other metrics and almost not at all by bandwidth.
Mbps stands for megabits per second, not megabytes per second (which would be shortened to MBps and isn't a common measurement of bandwidth). Also, Windows and many other software programs count units of kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes (multiples of 1024) while misleadingly displaying them as kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes (multiples of 1000). (EDIT: For example: 1.600 GiB = 1.718 GB = 13,744 megabits. 300 megabits = 37.5 MB = 35.763 MiB.)
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Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am a tech kind-of guy but only in the game department.
 
Yes I was referring to the downloadspeed command and how some server which are able to send at a faster speed still keep the default value.

Bandwidth don't matters in SRB2 outside of file transfer and synching. What matter is how stable your internet is(packet loss, ping variations...).
 
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