Separate Processes for Chat, Mail & Auction House

[Sumarious]

I'm not exactly sure how you have your services setup but I'd recommended making the chat system, the mail, and the auction house each running as their own process with a lower nice level than that of the game service. That way no matter how busy the actual game service is, those services will always have priority.

Several reasons for this..

1. I've noticed during peak times, the mail system can take upwards 45 seconds from the time you click "send" till the time the mail actually sends.

2. Same with the Auction house.. It don't ever delay like the mail system does, but it does appear to be either lagging or throttled in some way. Scanning 300 pages of auctions takes roughly 15-20 minutes.

3. The chat system.. I've never experienced any delay in the chat system, but running it as its own process would enable you to expand on it. Perhaps implement a "filter" that monitors transmitted messages for key words.. Perhaps the phrases the gold spammers use, or their urls.. then auto kick/ban.

I understand you're using cloudflare, and it does a good job of blocking most known proxy servers, but obviously the spammers are getting through it. There are tons of proxy servers they can hide behind, you're going to need some form of automated regulation or that's all you're GM's are going to be doing is getting tickets and responding to gold spammers. It may seem tedious at first, but every automated kick/ban is one less proxy server they can use to connect with. They will run out of options at some point. They will give up very quick if they can't even get their message seen before their current IP is useless and they have to find another.

[Aunstic]

I'm not exactly sure how you have your services setup but I'd recommended making the chat system, the mail, and the auction house each running as their own process with a lower nice level than that of the game service. That way no matter how busy the actual game service is, those services will always have priority.

Several reasons for this..

1. I've noticed during peak times, the mail system can take upwards 45 seconds from the time you click "send" till the time the mail actually sends.

2. Same with the Auction house.. It don't ever delay like the mail system does, but it does appear to be either lagging or throttled in some way. Scanning 300 pages of auctions takes roughly 15-20 minutes.

3. The chat system.. I've never experienced any delay in the chat system, but running it as its own process would enable you to expand on it. Perhaps implement a "filter" that monitors transmitted messages for key words.. Perhaps the phrases the gold spammers use, or their urls.. then auto kick/ban.

I understand you're using cloudflare, and it does a good job of blocking most known proxy servers, but obviously the spammers are getting through it. There are tons of proxy servers they can hide behind, you're going to need some form of automated regulation or that's all you're GM's are going to be doing is getting tickets and responding to gold spammers. It may seem tedious at first, but every automated kick/ban is one less proxy server they can use to connect with. They will run out of options at some point. They will give up very quick if they can't even get their message seen before their current IP is useless and they have to find another.

Starting from the bottom:

Nostalrius does not IP ban anyone. It's pointless. The IPv4 and IPv6 space is too widespread and you may eliminate other potential non-malicious players from playing by IP banning even one IP. Furthermore, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Now from the top:

Splitting the emulator into different servers means the same exact amount of players are still connecting to the world and logon servers. You're just making it more confusing. It's not the mail, auction house, or chat that's causing this problem. It's the amount of players. Nobody is going to spend the time to rewrite the emulator to separate them all into different processes and have them on their own separate servers. If you have the money, go ahead and try it yourself on a server rack you may or may not own.

Please... stop... research, come back, and then write a proper suggestion that is viable and won't take up space on the forum.

[Sumarious]

Are you sure it's not you that has no idea what you're talking about?

I never said "rewrite" the emulator.. nor did I say to run the other processes on different physical boxes.. Regardless of what you think.. Isolating the subsystem and running them from their own processes allows you to allocate resources independently and can have dramatic improvements in system stability and throughput. When one subsystem gets bogged down, they don't all have to bog down too.

It would be incredibly foolish if they are not IP banning gold farmers when they are detected. You may as well throw out all of your rules if you plan to never enforce them, or not have any real repercussions when people do. Banning a proxy or vpn server that a gold farmer is using to connect with and spam has absolutely no effect on other players what so ever.. Unless they too are in the position where they have been banned for some reason and are looking for a means to ban evade. Regardless.. Actively monitoring for and banning proxy and vpn addresses are just good practices for network security. Otherwise your servers becomes the wild wild west. No rules, no enforcement, no punishment.. I've been a server administrator for many decades, i've seen it many many times..

On retail wow, bliz didn't have to IP ban.. Every banned account meant a new copy of wow+xpacs had to be purchases. Thats great for them... That don't apply here.

I don't know what your background in IT is.. But never underestimate the importance of proper network security, regardless if its an enterprise network or a small private game server. You need to have a framework in place to protect your assets.

[Aunstic]

Banning a proxy or vpn server that a gold farmer is using to connect with and spam has absolutely no effect on other players what so ever

But you're wrong though.

Isolating the subsystem and running them from their own processes allows you to allocate resources independently and can have dramatic improvements in system stability and throughput.

But you're wrong though.

I never said "rewrite" the emulator

But you're wrong though.

I've been a server administrator for many decades, i've seen it many many times..

And I'm god.

I don't know what your background in IT is.. But never underestimate the importance of proper network security, regardless if its an enterprise network or a small private game server. You need to have a framework in place to protect your assets.

More bloat to your thread about how Nostal is doing it wrong by not IP banning, but banning by account. This isn't network sec. This is servers doing what they were intended to do. There's nothing in the config files that allows you to run things on separate processes so yes, you'd have to rewrite chat.h/chat.cpp in the world server to handle chat, AH, and mail in separate processes.

So yes, you are indeed wrong.

[Sumarious]

What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you such a wretched cunt to people for no reason?

[Aunstic]

What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you such a wretched cunt to people for no reason?

Because the suggestions and support sections are filled with people who think they have a good idea, but in reality they are not.

If you notice, we're the only ones in this thread because people back off when they don't know what they're talking about. You might know a bit about the countless threads of creating a second realm to split population though. Take your network sec ebook knowledge and take it in those threads. You may get a better response. I might be wrong.