Multiple Servers on the Same Network Allowing Players to Connect

[trevius]

I have been working on getting a Linux server running to move my server to and I think the server is all ready to go. I currently have both servers up and running, but of course they can't both use the same ports to be forwarded in the router. So, I set the zone ports to 7501-7600 (Main server using 7000-7500) and the TCP/IP port to 9001 (normally 9000) and the HTTP port to 9081 (normally 9080).

I am able to connect fine to this server from my windows PC on the same network, but I believe it goes directly over the lan, so port forwarding doesn't get used. No one else can connect to my server and I know it isn't the setting on HTTP, cause that has nothing to do with playing on the server. I also know it isn't the zone ports, because those can be anything you want. So, I am thinking that it might be the TCP/IP port being set to 9001 instead of 9000. Does anyone know if it is required to have it set to 9000 or does it not matter?

I have all of the ports forwarded in my router to the correct PC and have them configured properly in my eqemu config files.

<!-- Sets the ip/port for the tcp connections. Both zones and console (if enabled). Defaults are shown -->
<tcp ip="localhost" port="9001" telnet="disable"/>

<!-- Enable and set the port for the HTTP service. -->
<http port="9081" enabled="true" mimefile="mime.types" />

If that isn't the case, then I must have some other kind of port blocking on my Linux box. I am still very n00b to Linux, so I don't doubt that could be the case. I set it up using the Wiki that Aramid wrote for Debian Linux Etch install. It works great otherwise. If someone can verify if the port 9001 thing or if ports are blocked on my box, I would appreciate it. I am going to try testing tonight, but I have a feeling it might not work if I replace it with my current server.

After I am all done with this, I plan to do 1 more complete Debian Linux install and I will try to write up a step by step list of additions for the Wiki that Aramid wrote. I ran into a few more things that needed to be resolve. For one, if you use more than 1GB of ram on your server, it won't recognize it from a fresh CD install, you have to install a kernel that will recognize up to 4GBs.

Thanks in advance for any input on this.

[trevius]

Well, I changed it to port 9000 and set it up as the only server running now and it works great. So, I guess that confirms that using anything other than port 9000 as the setting for TCP/IP connections will NOT work. Good to know for future reference I guess lol. Not that it would happen often heh.

[Aramid]

Just to clarify, it was AndMetal that wrote the Wiki on installing on Debian Linux.

[trevius]

Oops, sorry about that lol! I didn't mean to mis-credit someone. Thanks for clarifying that!

[John Adams]

Happily I have stumbled upon this thread. Occasionally I get a wild hair and try and setup a World server on one box with MySQL - then I try setting up 2 Zone Servers each with dynamic/static settings. I am hunting around for a "plain english" HowTo on this, since it's apparently not straight forward.

I have a C:\EQEmu folder with all maps, quests, and perl installed in all 3 locations.

I have the eqemu_config.xml the same on all 3 boxes, with the exception of the port ranges for the 2 zone servers (7000-7100, and 8000-8100).

I have 2 launchers configured; 1 called zones, which boots 50 dynamic zones. The other called cities, which boots all the city and noobie zones statically.

I fire up World on Box A and wait for it to finish.
I fire up eqlaunch.exe zones on Box B, nothing.
I fire up eqlaunch.exe cities on Box C, nothing.

I go back to Box A, fire up eqlaunch zones and all 50 dynamic zones launch fine. /boggle

So, back to the Wiki I go - in hopes that someone wrote anything about how to configure the xml to work properly.

Any ideas?

[Aramid]

John, even when you get it to work, which you will, here's the rub. If a zone crashes, it will reboot Dynamically using the next highest port number available even if it was static before. So, if one of your cities crashes, it will reboot possibly on a different launcher and no one can access it until you reboot the system because it may now be on a port that is not redirected to it's original server. Best just to have a World Server and 1 zone server at this point.
That way all zone ports are on the one server and it won't cause as much of a problem.

[John Adams]

Egads, that's terrible. The design concept is great, and hopefully someone finds some time to fix it. Clustering/Balancing is all the rage these days. :)

Thanks for the info. I won't bother for now then. If the server gets busy, I'll move it to a physical box - although while I was running the Abyss, it was on a pretty tiny VM (512mb) with 20-30 players at a time. I never heard about lag, only that I nerfed something I shouldn't have. ;)

[trevius]

If you or anyone else is curious about more details on this issue and on how to set it up in general, you can find it here:

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25052

This problem is a pretty major one IMO and I would love to see it corrected at some point. In most cases though, the major limiting factor in server performance is upload speed.

The main reason I would love to have multiple zone servers is to get 1 or 2 of my heaviest zones moved to their own dedicated box just for them. I think it would increase stability on both PCs and help the server overall.

Honestly, to me, I don't think this would be a very hard thing to fix. But, I am not much of a coder (not at all really), so I can't do something about it myself or I would.

The sad thing is that everything is already there for this to work! All it needs is 1 or 2 seemingly minor changes to make it actually useful. If it ever does get fixed, I would gladly write a detailed wiki on how to set it up.