Lag, server crashes, and downtime on server, forums, wiki

[blackrazor]

Hi TMW admin team

First, to be clear, this is not a complaint in any way. I understand that this is a free service, provided as is, without warranty of any kind, and I am grateful for it.

That being said, for the past week (or a bit more, certainly preceding storm Sandy, in any case), the server has experienced frequent lag spikes of between 3 and 30 seconds, and also complete server crashes about 1 to 2 times a day. The forum and wiki go down during these periods as well, so I guess it's the machine hosting TMW or its connection to the internet that may be the issue. These blackouts seem to affect everyone, so I know it's not on my end. Plus, I can connect to everything else on the net just fine during these periods, including sites in Poland.

I bring this up, just to let the developers know, and to touch base on this issue. I'm curious if it's just random, or if there is a known hardware, software, or connection issue regarding the server. I think the player database (TMW ascii flat-file) was recently cleaned from inactives, so I hope it's not that. Does anyone on the admin side of TMW (or people that talk to them regularly) have any idea what is happening regarding this?

[Ablu]

Server is in poland. So probably no Sandy issue

[Frost]

Blackrazor, these are excellent questions. The server hosting TMW has, as you say, been slow or impossible to reach for periods of time. It seems to recover to normal, and then the problem happens again. You aren't the first person to wonder about this, and it's great to discuss them openly. I'll tell you what I know as a TMW admin.

The server itself seems okay. The computer has been running continually for more than 2 months. The game server processes don't crash or appear in any way impaired at any time. Performance on the server is perfectly fine. There are no software errors and no indication of a hardware problem. Logs report that other sites on the Internet were down during these times, which points to a network problem.

There's no indication of an attack against the game.

Developers, admins, and GMs are concerned too. We'll fix anything we can. Unfortunately, we can't fix external problems like Internet connectivity.

[blackrazor]

Frost, I really appreciate that you informed the community, to the best of your knowledge, about what is going on. As a small update, over the past 36 hours or so, the situation has deteriorated from "down occasionally / lag often" to "down mostly / lag almost always" and the game-play situation has gone from "moderately inconvenient" to "downright unplayable".

Again, to be clear, I'm not complaining. Just updating my concerns regarding the situation. Whatever is the source of the problem, whether directly in TMW admin's control or not, I hope it can at least be identified with some certainty, and hopefully corrected soon.

TMW is such a cool special place, and I feel we will overcome this and any obstacles, as a community.

EDIT: For the past hour or two, TMW server, forum, and wiki have been back to normal, (mostly) lag-free. I don't want to jinx it, but hopefully whatever was broken, has been fixed.

[shygorgon]

Been having trouble getting onto the server today. Says the host server is down... I am in east coast America... It might be from the hurricane???

[Nard]

Been having trouble getting onto the server today. Says the host server is down... I am in east coast America... It might be from the hurricane???

The server is in Poland and:

[...]The game server processes don't crash or appear in any way impaired at any time. Performance on the server is perfectly fine. There are no software errors and no indication of a hardware problem. Logs report that other sites on the Internet were down during these times, which points to a network problem.

There's no indication of an attack against the game.

[o11c]

Hm, I guess it *is* possible that those of us having problems have our network routed *through* the hurricane...

I, at least, have been having connection difficulties and live in the western US.

[Crush]

Hm, I guess it *is* possible that those of us having problems have our network routed *through* the hurricane...

Highly unlikely. I am in Germany (which, as you should know, is right next to Poland and very far away from North America) and this morning I couldn't reach themanaworld.org either. I just did a traceroute and it didn't even leave Europe (Hamburg->Frankfurt->Berlin->Warshaw).

Dear Americans: just because that strong breeze right now does affects you a lot, doesn't mean that it also affects the rest of the world (at least not directly).