Do frame relays gobble bandwidth?

[Omicron]

I just finished troubleshooting an interesting issue on my server.

I host it on a secondary machine at home, and I have about 1 MBit/s upstream on my DSL line. This is perfectly fine because I only have 4 other players besides myself, and usually bandwidth usage stays below 25% unless somebody goes exploring and loads a lot of chunks really quickly.

Usually.

In the past days, however, bandwidth was permanently maxed out, and latency was terrible, even with only 2-3 people connected. I narrowed down that anyone within loading distance of a certain castle was consuming 10 to 15 times as much bandwidth as usual. Yes. One player consuming as much bandwidth as 10 players normally. Now put 3 players there together and watch horror unfold.

It turned out to be related to the castle gate. It was set up with frame relays so it could be opened and closed. Really cool, I liked it a lot. But for some reason it was causing this enormous bandwidth hunger, even when sitting idle. And as soon as all the circuitry controlling it was shut off, everything went back to normal instantly.

Is that normal for frame relays? Or does it maybe depend on how they are set up?

[Watchful11]

Um, what exactly are frame relays? There are frames, and there are relays, but i haven't heard of frame relays.

In general, elloraam is a very good coder and i doubt there would be such a big bug in her code to eat up bandwidth like that.

Best guess is that it was another mod that happened to stop when you tried to fix the problem.

But that's a guess, I don't really know without a better description.

[Omicron]

Sorry, I'm not that experienced yet with Tekkit. I thought that was what they were called. Guess I got some wires crossed in my head

And no, it was definitely the frames. Literally everything else in the area, down to the last vanilla furnace, was shut down prior to that. It was the last thing we disabled.

I'm not saying they're coded wrong, but maybe the way they are set up matters. That's why I was asking - if there's any known way you can "do it wrong" that causes massive bandwidth drain. Is it the act of moving that's expensive, maybe? With the active circuitry behind it permanently running to await signals from the owner's remote control, maybe the frames were constantly trying to continue moving further than they were able to?

[Watchful11]

Well, frames work be converting all the attached blocks into an entity and moving it, then turning it back into blocks.

If its big, it could might take some bandwidth.

But if you just have a door that is one set of frames and moves in one direction, I don't see how it could be such a big problem.

What kind of circuitry do you have controlling it? It shouldn't be too hard to just have a circuit that waits for a pulse from a wireless receiver.

If you want I would be glad to come on your server and help troubleshoot.

[NVX]

Your issues most likely stem from redalloy wire (any form) on the output of a timer, or any other clock. It will rape your bandwidth (I've seen over 5mbit per player in one machine that had a lot of it). Fix is to use vanilla dust where the redstone signal changes a lot, or put your timer right next to the frame motor with no cable between it.

Say what you will about Elloraams coding abilities, but she dun goofed this one. :)

[Omicron]

Wow, good suggestion! We actually do have a lot of bandwidth issues with timers (I made a newer thread, I see you replied there as well). I'm curious to see if this will make a difference.

[darzavor]

We had a similar problem as NVX describes. Continuously pulsing redalloy wire all over a base can cause severe lag.

[MasterVentris]

How is the wiring set up? Do you have a timer constantly running and then a way to connect those pulses to the frame motors when you want to move the door?

You might be better pausing the timers (constant signal to the "bottom" side) or using computercraft to wait for a signal and then move the motors. This way the redstone updates are only when the frame is being moved.

I can help you with either solution, with pictures or code.

[darzavor]

I'm using CC to open/close two castlegates built from frames. They have a doorbell so I can see in my workshop if someone is at the gate. They are just for show now though, because everyone can warp inside my castle. But the program just sends 3 pulses to the specific motor that opens or closes the gate.

I don't see how anyone would need timers that constantly run for gates.

[MrKekson]

im done some measurments,

bukkit++ 9 chunk view range:

all in kB not kbit (multiply with 8 for kbit)

all factoryes are rp based, 100+ items on the move

standing still, with no movement 8-10k/s

running on normal speed, 50k/s

standing in a small factory 100+k/s

standing in a gigalagfest factory 220-310k/s

so 1mbit can even handle 1 person in a big factory

310k/s * 8 = 2,5 mbit/sec

this factory would throw you out in like 2 seconds after start, with stack owerflow