How does one improve tick rate?

[xxmatthewo]

I have been hosting a server for about two weeks now, and recently has gotten over 30 players. However, at around 30 players, the tick rate drops for 18 - 20 to 7 - 14, which is quite unbearable (slow machines, long nights, stupid AI, delayed broadcasts). Before this I had a problem with engines not exploding due to LWC protections, but have fixed that and still tick rate is pretty awful. I browsed other servers with decent player counts, and all seem to have not the great tickrate (SGTekkit at 6tps, TekkitCraft at 7 tps).

So I am wondering how do you improve tick rate?

The plugins I currently run on the server is:

• AutoAnnouncer
  
• BorderGuard
  
• ChatManager
  
• ChestShop
  
• CommandBook
  
• CreativeGates
  
• Falsebook
  
• iConomy
  
• LagMeter
  
• LWC
  
• MCDocs
  
• MineBackup
  
• Openinv
  
• RecipeRepo
  
• Residence
  
• Spectate
  
• StarterKit
  
• TerrainControl
  
• Towny
  
• VanishNoPacket
  
• WorldEdit
  
• WorldGuard
  

And I also currently have ComputerCraft and EE2 disabled.

Only errors I get in the server log is one relating to a quarry running in town, and invalid buildcraft pipes from a rollback. (don't have errors available)

Does any large server owner want to help me understand what is wrong and help?

EDIT: Server CPU usage is at 60 percent, and have 4GB of Ram which 1.1GB is free

[j2ther]

What are your server stats? You can start off by trying NoLagg and using its examiner feature, it will tell you how much thread time your plugins are taking up. There could be a nasty plugin taking up to much thread time. You can get more indepth with various JVM testing/tuning tools but examiner can give you a simple and quick look. NoLagg itself has some great features (like item buffering and item stacking) to help out with TPS killers like entities all over the ground.

Minecraft is also CPU instensive and Tekkit adds to that a bit, so monitoring your CPU usage at peak hours could tell you if that is your bottleneck. If your CPU is your bottleneck then consider disabling some more CPU intensive mod items like quarries, block breakers, turtles, etc, and use NoLagg's examiner to see if you can trim down some resource hungry plugins.

Hard disk read/write times play a big part for a server's tps as well. If you are on a linux system you can run iotop and see if something is taking up all of your read/write time and not leaving any room for your server. If something is you can use ionice to give it less priority and so minecraft can get its much needed iotime.

and of course a naughty network can wreak havoc on your server tics as well. What kind of internet speeds you got? Are you experiencing any problems like packet loss?

There are a lot of things that can cause your TPS to drop, going down the line and singling out everything one by one is the best way to go.

Both in Tekkit 2 and now in 3 we have no problem running with 30-40 people and maintaining 20 tps.

[xxmatthewo]

Connection Speed is 50 Down and 25 Up I am pretty sure

Processor is this one: http://ark.intel.com/products/33079/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5405-(12M-Cache-2_00-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB)

Ram is 4 gigabytes

Unable to check hard drive speed

Only thing I would be willing to remove is Residence and mcMMO

[j2ther]

The 25 upload speed is prob the bottleneck with 30+ people on >_> are you running the server on your home connection?

By the looks of that examine all the plugins seem fine. How long did you run it for? I would run examine for a good hour when you have a lot of people on or when you are seeing the tps drop.

The CPU looks like it'd be fine with just one server running 50 people, again though when you are seeing the TPS drops I would open up whatever monitoring tool you use and watch your CPU load. Also if you are experiencing random TPS drops I would tp to everyone online and see if there are any crazy setups (like some crazy cobblegens) running that is sucking up your resources (which would spike your CPU usage).

What operating system are you running? There are various programs for all the operating systems to check Hard drive I/O performance.

Like I said tons of things can affect your server's tics. The best bet is to run through all these tests while the server is experiencing low tic rates, but my money would be on the

Connection Speed is 50 Down and 25 Up

[xxmatthewo]

The 25 upload speed is prob the bottleneck with 30+ people on >_> are you running the server on your home connection?

It might be 50, I don`t know. It is a friends server, and he has commercial internet and a dedicated server. I have not noticed any mob or block lag while playing.

By the looks of that examine all the plugins seem fine. How long did you run it for? I would run examine for a good hour when you have a lot of people on and are seeing the tps drops.

I ran it for 500 ticks, and here it is for 2000: http://gyazo.com/3f31221532d8718a3d896ff6e3e051f1.png?1339280890

The CPU looks like it'd be fine with just one server running 50 people, again though when you are seeing the TPS drops I would open up whatever monitoring tool you use and watch your CPU load. Also if you are experiencing random TPS drops I would tp to everyone online and see if there are any crazy setups (like some crazy cobblegens) running that is sucking up your resources (which would spike your CPU usage).

I use the `top` command in Linux. Always is around 60 percent. I have tried to teleport around to players, but teleporting to 30 or so players, and then looking for their base, etc is very tedious.

What operating system are you running? There are various programs for all the operating systems to check I/O performance.

Running ubuntu 12 server edition. I tried the command you mentioned above but don`t have root access.

Like I said tons of things can affect your server's tics. The best bet is to run through all these tests while the server is experiencing low tic rates, but my money would be on the

I will run it for 8000 ticks right now

[xxmatthewo]

8000 ticks plugins: http://gyazo.com/f02fb370eecfd111c38a21c4a8ff3654

8000 ticks events: http://gyazo.com/efec9b1f53638734a5343b349bbe4788

Block Physics Event takes up most of it...

[j2ther]

When monitoring top pay attention to the load average as well. In general, the idea of load averages is the higher they rise above the number of processors, the more demand there is for the CPUs, and the lower they fall below the number of processors, the more untapped CPU capacity there is.

You can always ask your buddy to install iotop if he has sudo/root access. Just apt-get install iotop. Since you don't have it though you can use another feature in regular top.

When in top pay attention to the wa. It'll display a %wa, that is the amount of time the cpu has been waiting for for I/O to complete. High percentage could mean something is taking up the I/O in that case iotop will help you figure out the culprit.

The examine still looks fine, but again is very dependant on whether or not those plugins are being utilized at the time. Which is why running it for at least 10 minutes while a lot of users are online will give a more accurate display.

The 8000 tick test looks fine, we use towny as well and during heavy server usage you can expect it to be up around 1000ms along with block physic events. If block physics events are that high with only a few players on then I would expect that something in the map causing it, like some crazy blockbreaker/redstone/redpower/buildcraft/cobblegen creation.

teleporting to 30 or so players, and then looking for their base, etc is very tedious.

If your not willing to teleport to the players online to see if anything is affecting your server then you can just stop now running a server is tedious in itself. If you don't have the time to keep track of whats going on inside your server then you shouldn't run a large server

So if your monitoring your cpu usage, hard disk usage, and examining your plugins with lots of people on or while your server tics are low and all seems well with those results then I would start considering that its your internet connection. If you are on a good commercial connection then I would also test to see of there is nothing wrong on the network.

You can start by running a MyTraceroute to see if you are getting any packet loss or high latency. You can run either from the server to you, or you to the server (running both is recommended and more accurate). Since you don't have access to install it on your dedi then you can download it yourself and run it on your computer.

Heres MTR's main website http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/

and here is a version of MTR for windows http://winmtr.net/

[sct]

Network speed shouldn't affect the servers tick rate at all.

[j2ther]

You sir are right. I would imagine packet loss would affect tic rate though.

[xxmatthewo]

WA seems to hover between 0.0 and 3.0

I pinged the server and at 200 packets sent and 198 were received.

I searched online about server hosting, and bandwidth it takes, and others have said you only need 1 mbps upload for 10 people, so 25 for 40 should be plenty, right?

Are you sure it is not a tekkit bug or plugin bug? Like I said above I had the bug where engines weren't exploding when they were suppose to and it caused TPS to drop to like 4. Because it would be calculating the explosion many times a second since it 'kept' exploding.

[j2ther]

Are you sure it is not a tekkit bug or plugin bug? Like I said above I had the bug where engines weren't exploding when they were suppose to and it caused TPS to drop to like 4. Because it would be calculating the explosion many times a second since it 'kept' exploding.

Also if you are experiencing random TPS drops I would tp to everyone online and see

[xxmatthewo]

Network speed shouldn't affect the servers tick rate at all.

I joined your server and noticed around 7 tps. What do you do about it? Just ignore it?

[xxmatthewo]

I know that, but what any common problems?

[j2ther]

We have buildcraft removed on our server since its pretty redundant with RedPower2 out now. So I can't say if I've noticed the unending exploding engines in Tekkit 3. I haven't noticed any bugs like that yet in the other mods, but anything that forces the CPU to do a lot of calculations will kill your tics. So like I said check around your map and see what setups everyone has.

[xxmatthewo]

We have buildcraft removed on our server since its pretty redundant with RedPower2 out now. So I can't say if I've noticed the unending exploding engines in Tekkit 3. I haven't noticed any bugs like that yet in the other mods, but anything that forces the CPU to do a lot of calculations will kill your tics. So like I said check around your map and see what setups everyone has.

Removing Buildcraft is a great idea. I hate quarries leaving those nasty world holes. I will do a check up tonight on most players.

I am just wondering why BlockPhysicsEvent is so high.

[j2ther]

I imagine its from one of your plugins using BlockPhysicsEvent and checking for block changes. I believe towny uses the event for some of its plot management features, like when it regens land.

Do you have the towny feature on that regens land?

and ya you can pretty much do everything in RedPower2 that you can in BuildCraft so just felt like a redundant resource hog and saw no reason to keep it in.

[xxmatthewo]

I imagine its from one of your plugins using BlockPhysicsEvent and checking for block changes. I believe towny uses the event for some of its plot management features, like when it regens land.

Do you have the towny feature on that regens land?

and ya you can pretty much do everything in RedPower2 that you can in BuildCraft so just felt like a redundant resource hog and saw no reason to keep it in.

Disabled that towny feature, and didn't change much. I have browse over a dozen server and only one have a tickrate over 13 with over 30 players online. You must be a wizard for experiencing no tickrate lag.

[gummby8]

I would recommend RCD (redstone clock detector) works great even on redpower clocks. I run the test for 1 second, if too many redstone clocks are going faster than that, it is usually a problem. Our server is no joke, but get a dozen or so redpower clocks going at top speed and you will see a difference in the tick rate.

http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/redstone-clock-detector/

EE also was a major MAJOR cause of low ticks when we were first testing tekkit on our server. Just 4 full energy collector arrays would cut the tick rate in half. Not sure if EE or IC have an option so give more energy but at slower ticks, but I am sure it would help

[ledhead900]

IC you can adjust some operations that run on Ticks in the config but not many, I noticed some stuff with the converters config as well to do with EU per Tick this might help. I would consider banning water farms. I just banned that electric light because when it gets unsteady power it flickers and when that happens the minecraft lighting engine shits a brick and craps the tps to like 12 or 17tps or lower every few tick cycles until its fixed just one room with it doing that made our server CPU reach 80% load and stay there until I killed the lights.

They seem very unstable so I just disabled those. However I thought it was the crazy waterfarm one of my staff members made that had over 100 water converters and easily over 300 buckets in any tube at any time though it proved to be the lights after we isolated that as the issue since we turned the machines all off in that chunk that was causing massive FPS drops and cpu usage.

That being said I really would not mind the IC2 and buildcraft guys to include pipe configs so I can reduce the number of items allowed in the pipes in any given tick.