[634] (Absolutely useless) load balancing

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Originally Posted by Corey [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

The same goes for OSRS, and almost certainly the revision OP is using. You could change the default world depending on server load, round-robin, whatever lb-strategy you want.
You could also load balance the config script (with parameters etc) endpoint.

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^. You can just generate the config on request (e.g. query worlds for player count, set default world to lowest or whatever strategy). Then you can cache that for whatever interval. Whenever the cache is evicted, next request will regenerate the config.

Not sure what you're trying to do though.

The whole idea of load balancing is that you don't need to communicate between your hosts. Because each request is going through the load balancer, it is the one that decides which host to choose. That's the main function of a load balancer, select a host.

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There are different types of implementations (algorithms) that can decide which host to choose. You can find the algorithms using a simple google search "load balancer algorithms".

The default algorithm is "least connections", which simply picks the host with the least connections. But you don't always want this. You may have a host running on 8 cores and a host running on 2 cores. What you want in this scenario is that the 8 cores will be chosen more frequently than the second one because it's more "powerful". This load balancer algorithm is called "weighted least connections". The 8 cores host has a bigger "weight" of being chosen.

Each algorithm has its purpose.

in most servers this hasn't been a problem and there haven't been any measures implemented that would indicate load balancing was necessary.
the only examples that come to mind are [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...], alotic and some 614 (might be dementhium). they both had standalone update servers/social servers/game servers.

Yeah sounds like the most simple way to do this is have a query before you assign the IP & Port to the client, and let your load balancer pick which server to send the user to. Sounds like this could be fun to implement, but not sure if it's required in this particular niche.

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Originally Posted by Nozemi [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

OSRS has worlds, and cap them at 2k players iirc.

I don't think what you're suggesting is even invented for RS or any private servers. You would need to write a server that can communicate with other instances of the server. Otherwise you'll also end up having separate worlds, which is probably the way to go about it.

However, realistically; you don't have to worry about this at all. If your server can't handle the amount of players you get, it's most likely due to shit code.

The more realistic question is how to load balance connections to prevent DDoS. Not entirely sure how to go about this, but I'd try reverse proxying the traffic. However, in most cases, using OVH should suffice for this as well.

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That's not quite true, while the game worlds aren't load balanced, the login server's I believe are. IIRC from playing back in 08-12 there used to be around 20 login servers/lobbies e.g. lobby7.runescape.com

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Originally Posted by Tyluur [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

in most servers this hasn't been a problem and there haven't been any measures implemented that would indicate load balancing was necessary.
the only examples that come to mind are [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...], alotic and some 614 (might be dementhium). they both had standalone update servers/social servers/game servers.

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:D To add to that, no load balancing is actually one of Hestia's issues, connecting 2k clients simultaneously is problematic as everything goes through the 3-in-1 login/lobby/cross-world-chat "social server". But let's face it, no live server's need to test or support 2k concurrent login's.

The guy's talking about config's are correct, you can pass the lobbyid and lobbyaddress as client properties which will offset the port starting at 40000 (50000 for dev mode). You've got to watch out though, a lot of "dirty" high revision clients have world/lobby offsets "disabled" by whoever did the first Isaac disabling and subsequently everyone who copied him. At least in all 637, 666 & 667 client's I've seen in the downloads section.

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Originally Posted by Greg [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

That's not quite true, while the game worlds aren't load balanced, the login server's I believe are. IIRC from playing back in 08-12 there used to be around 20 login servers/lobbies e.g. lobby7.runescape.com

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Yeah, didn't think about that!

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Originally Posted by Nozemi [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Never done load balancing myself, so wouldn't really know the best practice. However, you could have your client ask a web service what server instances are listening for connections. Then choose the one with least load.

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That sounds like the best idea for what I'm trying to accomplish. I was wondering how to integrate that step inside the client's protocol, but I realized I could just fetch the data from the web service before launching the JFrame... That would be quite simple and easy to implement.

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Originally Posted by knd6060 [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

I thought rs hosted 4 worlds per server. Idk where i got that info from could be wrong

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Huh maybe, but that sounds like a pain to manage. I'd rather not add multi-world support for game servers.

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Originally Posted by techdaan [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

I'm not sure about older game versions, but in RS3 the game configuration (jav_config.ws) contains the default hosts.

Unfortunately many clients and servers hardcode the startup parameters. If you load them from a website you can set the default host for js5, lobby et cetera. In RS3 the default world server is sent during lobby login.

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Yep, that's what I'm going to do. Just call some API and fetch the default hosts at startup.

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Originally Posted by Corey [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

You could also load balance the config script (with parameters etc) endpoint.

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If you're talking about the server that sends the initial hosts back to the client, assuming that's his only responsibility I don't think load balancing is necessary. Even though it will get multiple startup requests, that information would be extremely lightweight.

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Originally Posted by Khaleesi [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

^. You can just generate the config on request (e.g. query worlds for player count, set default world to lowest or whatever strategy). Then you can cache that for whatever interval. Whenever the cache is evicted, next request will regenerate the config.

Not sure what you're trying to do though.

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Thanks for the idea. I'm probably just going to generate it once per minute. The worlds can just update their connection count in the DB and then I can generate some formula based on that.

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Originally Posted by Admiral Slee [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

The whole idea of load balancing is that you don't need to communicate between your hosts. Because each request is going through the load balancer, it is the one that decides which host to choose. That's the main function of a load balancer, select a host.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

There are different types of implementations (algorithms) that can decide which host to choose. You can find the algorithms using a simple google search "load balancer algorithms".

The default algorithm is "least connections", which simply picks the host with the least connections. But you don't always want this. You may have a host running on 8 cores and a host running on 2 cores. What you want in this scenario is that the 8 cores will be chosen more frequently than the second one because it's more "powerful". This load balancer algorithm is called "weighted least connections". The 8 cores host has a bigger "weight" of being chosen.

Each algorithm has its purpose.

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I didn't think of the individual server strength. I guess I can just store the number of cores in the DB and do a load formula like:

connection_count * (1/server_cores)

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Originally Posted by chaflie [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Yeah sounds like the most simple way to do this is have a query before you assign the IP & Port to the client, and let your load balancer pick which server to send the user to. Sounds like this could be fun to implement, but not sure if it's required in this particular niche.

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Yep, that's the plan.

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Originally Posted by Greg [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

That's not quite true, while the game worlds aren't load balanced, the login server's I believe are. IIRC from playing back in 08-12 there used to be around 20 login servers/lobbies e.g. lobby7.runescape.com




:D To add to that, no load balancing is actually one of Hestia's issues, connecting 2k clients simultaneously is problematic as everything goes through the 3-in-1 login/lobby/cross-world-chat "social server". But let's face it, no live server's need to test or support 2k concurrent login's.

The guy's talking about config's are correct, you can pass the lobbyid and lobbyaddress as client properties which will offset the port starting at 40000 (50000 for dev mode). You've got to watch out though, a lot of "dirty" high revision clients have world/lobby offsets "disabled" by whoever did the first Isaac disabling and subsequently everyone who copied him. At least in all 637, 666 & 667 client's I've seen in the downloads section.

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Yep, planning on overwriting the parameters on client launch for lobbyaddress.

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Anyway, thanks for the help everyone!

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Originally Posted by clem585 [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

That sounds like the best idea for what I'm trying to accomplish. I was wondering how to integrate that step inside the client's protocol, but I realized I could just fetch the data from the web service before launching the JFrame... That would be quite simple and easy to implement.



Huh maybe, but that sounds like a pain to manage. I'd rather not add multi-world support for game servers.



Yep, that's what I'm going to do. Just call some API and fetch the default hosts at startup.



If you're talking about the server that sends the initial hosts back to the client, assuming that's his only responsibility I don't think load balancing is necessary. Even though it will get multiple startup requests, that information would be extremely lightweight.



Thanks for the idea. I'm probably just going to generate it once per minute. The worlds can just update their connection count in the DB and then I can generate some formula based on that.



I didn't think of the individual server strength. I guess I can just store the number of cores in the DB and do a load formula like:

connection_count * (1/server_cores)



Yep, that's the plan.



Yep, planning on overwriting the parameters on client launch for lobbyaddress.

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Anyway, thanks for the help everyone!

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Another factor to consider is what you're trying to achieve; are you trying to reduce the latency that the user experiences by connecting them to their nearest server, or distribute load across multiple servers?

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Originally Posted by hc747 [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Another factor to consider is what you're trying to achieve; are you trying to reduce the latency that the user experiences by connecting them to their nearest server, or distribute load across multiple servers?

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Probably the 2nd due to the lack of servers. But either way, since the server is choosing the algorithm, it's really easy to implement both and have a switch between the two modes. It's probably just a few line of code each.

Load-based: make a cached list based off the formula I wrote: connection_count * (1/server_cores)
Proximity-based: fetch location from connected client + calculate closest server

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Originally Posted by clem585 [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Probably the 2nd due to the lack of servers. But either way, since the server is choosing the algorithm, it's really easy to implement both and have a switch between the two modes. It's probably just a few line of code each.

Load-based: make a cached list based off the formula I wrote: connection_count * (1/server_cores)
Proximity-based: fetch location from connected client + calculate closest server

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Imo, load-based should be server authoritative whereas the client should determine it's closest server based off of latency / ping sampling.