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Posts: 3
Reply with quote  #1 
Hi Artemis community.

We are running a convention event with a 2 ship setup and are running into some connectivity problems: every so often (can happen about a dozen times during a 1 hour session) one of the stations will get disconnected from the server for a few seconds and reconnect. Sometimes it takes a manual disconnect and reconnect, but more often it just reconnects on its own.

Our setup:
- Server is an HP laptop with an i7 processor and 8GB RAM running Windows 7, and is also running the main screen for Artemis.
- 11 station HP laptops with an i3 processor and 4GB RAM running Windows 10 (5 Artemis bridge stations, 5 Intrepid bridge stations, 1 Intrepid main screen).
- All systems are rentals with freshly installed OS
- Networking is done by a dedicated 8 port 1GBps switch for each ship and a D-Link consumer wireless router (wireless and WAN turned off) that wires to both ship switches and the server/Artemis main screen.
- The game is set up in Co-Op mode.

My initial concern is that the network can't handle the bandwidth requirements, possibly because the D-Link router can't handle so many wired clients. Anything else I can check to get more information about what's going on?

This is a bit urgent because the event is running now and ends tomorrow night. This is the first time we're running 2 ships concurrently, and its unlikely that we'll be able to reproduce this setup until next year's event - which won't happen unless we can convince the organizers that we solved the problem.

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Posts: 68
Reply with quote  #2 
Did you notice any lag otherwise while playing? Especially delays between the Intrepid and Artemis?

Out of everything you've mentioned, the D-Link looks to me like it would be the bottleneck. We've been able to run multi-ship games on a less powerful system before, so I doubt the server is the issue.

Illuminati XO


Posts: 3
Reply with quote  #3 
Thanks for the reply. Yesterday morning we had some rubber banding on Intrepid but it seemed to have resolved itself through the day and later sessions didn't complain about it.

We'll replace the router with a decent 1GBps switch and see if it solves the problem.
Mike Substelny

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Posts: 2,265
Reply with quote  #4 
Actually the D-Link ought to have enough bandwidth, provided wifi is definitely turned off.

We have occasionally seen symptoms like this when we run 4-8 bridges at my house. The culprit is usually one slightly damaged CAT-5 cable somewhere on the network.

- Winston Churchill

Posts: 3
Reply with quote  #5 
We've replaced the router with a switch, and we didn't get any more disconnects, though I later tested some of the cables that the convention's technical person cramped in place for us, and they were all groundless but otherwise OK. (I initially thought that they had only 4 pins running, making them a CAT5 and not CAT5e, but that was incorrect as I've tested them through a 100mbps switch by mistake).

So our current setup which seem to work is:

[Artemis]__[ Main ]__[Intrepid]
[Switch ]  [Switch]  [ Switch ]
    |         |          |
+++++++++   Server    ++++++++
Artemis               Intrepid
Stations              Stations

And this setup looks stable. The D-Link router is still connected to provide the DHCP services, but doesn't handle any of the traffic. I believe the problem is that its a small single band DWR-921 residential router - not even a prosumer DIR class router - and is only 100MBps unlike what I said earlier, and couldn't handle the traffic of all the stations.
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