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  #1  
Old 03-22-2009, 11:36 PM
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Default Dual Login-Servers?

I don't know how much this has been discussed, but with the event of many loginservers popping up now, we may have to look into something new for connecting to them all. Trevius and I have spoken about this idea ages ago, and we came to this idea, or something similar (I personally think this works great!)

It would work like this:

Server is listed on both loginservers. Depending on which loginserver you log in to (based on IP), it would forward your account to a different accounts table. This would mean we could have the same characters table since they are linked by account name, however, it would also mean we'd have to re-write a lot of code to make this work (mainly SQL code)

This would make it so we could have characters from both loginservers logging in and not conflicting.

Is anyone willing to take up this task? It is possibly the only thing that will be able to keep the community together and not split up into shreds at this point... put them together at the world level instead of the loginserver level. I think at this point this should be priority to not split up a community.
  #2  
Old 03-23-2009, 01:15 AM
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Yeah, a dual LS setup would probably be a great way to ensure that the community never has to be split between various Login Servers.

Having multiple Public Login Servers would probably be hard to make a solution that both accounts can be used from either LS without either having both databases sync'd to each other, or opening up possible security risks or other odd issues. I am sure with a bit of creativity, it would be very possible though.

So far I have a good idea about how to have a pretty secure dual LS setup with 1 Public (Normal Public LS) and 1 Private LS (Hosted on the server you are connecting to) and be able to use the same accounts on the Private that were created on the Public one. But, I don't have a simple solution for 2 Public Login Servers just yet.
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  #3  
Old 03-23-2009, 10:54 AM
Belfedia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trevius View Post
So far I have a good idea about how to have a pretty secure dual LS setup with 1 Public (Normal Public LS) and 1 Private LS (Hosted on the server you are connecting to) and be able to use the same accounts on the Private that were created on the Public one. But, I don't have a simple solution for 2 Public Login Servers just yet.
Have you think about security problem ?
If all local LS can handle account, a hacker can make a local LS for have acces to all login/password ....

I think 2 login servers is enough with spare of account...
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  #4  
Old 03-23-2009, 07:07 PM
Aergad
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I wish i could understand the Devs paranoia about the project forking, worst case scenario is that there is a larger community which would mean more opensource work being done alla round. Furthermore players as well as server ops have multiple choices, instead of the basic SOE live clone that exists now with the current monopoly.

The SWG Emu server has its own LS That is built right into their server WOW Emu does as do others. and those projects are all doing fine.

As has been demonstrated the way things work now is woefully inadequate. one LS goes down and noone has an option to even play at all. Atleast with some kind of an official LS Release there would be redunancy, there would be options for everyone to still be able to play on their respective servers with or without the main LS being active.

Last night not only was the main public LS down but also the third party LS down at the same time leaving everyone absolutly no option whatsoever.

I submit to you that isnt the paranoia of the project getting forked here and there a bit out of hand in such a circumstance where noone has any option to login at all??
  #5  
Old 03-23-2009, 07:36 PM
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As I have stated many times before, these issues should be a thing of the past soon and no longer a concern, so there isn't really much need to get too worked up about it.

Paranoia (if you want to call it that) works both ways. Just as we may be concerned about giving out Login Servers to anyone who wishes to have them, you are Paranoid about the Login Server being a single point of failure and have little faith that one could be created that would have very minimal downtime.

The fact is that the current official Login Server could not be distributed in any way for multiple reasons, one being that the creator of it specified not too and we are legally bound by that decision. Other Login Server options are starting to pop up and I wouldn't be surprised if we see 1 or 2 more options in the near future. What is done with them is up to their creators. I believe the only one being worked on by an actual EQEmu team member is the one that WildcardX is currently working on. I don't have the details of the plans he has to use that for yet though.

Really, EQEmu can't easily be compared to some of the other emulators, because we have a unique setup that works well for our needs, or at least will once the LS stuff is all back in working order again. To even compare any of the multiple WoW Emulators to this project is just wrong lol. Not only does WoW have a hundred times more players than EQ, but they also have at least 3 separate major emulator projects all doing their own thing. With a huge community like that, sure, they can do things differently and still do OK. Personally, the main reason I won't even consider running a WoW emulator server is due to the community as a whole. They are split between their multiple projects and each server is split due to their private Login Server system as well. So, you have servers advertising everywhere if they want to maintain any sort of decent player-base. You also have no one easy place to go to even get started. If you are a player, it is a bit overwhelming trying to find a decent server to play on and can take quite a while of searching around the net to even get information on various servers. If you are an admin, you have to first pick which emulator version you want to use, and then which database you want to use and so on. I imagine there is probably some setup that is better than most to get you started off, but from all of the searching I did, I found no clear answer as to which one that would be. Not to mention having to find one that has decent tools made for creating content. I didn't personally see any special tools like what we have for EQEmu when I was searching around about the WoW Emulators.

SWG and EQ2Emu are both in development, so it is hard to really compare them to EQEmu as well IMO.

We have a very limited player-base that probably maxes out around 1000 or so total players throughout a 24 hour period, which would probably only be over the weekend. That doesn't leave much play room to be forking. If you cut those numbers in half by forking the project, it would quickly get to a point where people would have a hard time finding a group/raid and get bored and quit. The more that numbers dwindle, it would be likely to start a snowball effect causing the project to basically be abandoned completely. I think that should be avoided at all costs. Call that paranoia, but when dealing with dividing up an already relatively low population project, I think you are just asking for the worst.

Hopefully something can be worked out to give us a backup option anyway. But, forking is not a good solution IMO.
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  #6  
Old 03-23-2009, 08:32 PM
Aergad
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well thats the thing most people wont fork theres no point to it really. Nor would that be the purpose of releasing a better LS option then minilogin. Yeah a few forks might pop up but on the whole nothing would really change.

About releasing public login according to what ive read the agreement is that the source not be opened, precompiled binaries are not the source.

and whats to say that when the new server is bought for the ls it wont still have the same problems and vulnerabilities as was posted the ls is brought down by exploiters at present new hardware wont solve that problem.

All im saying is we need more and better options, or eventually we will be back in the same boat we are now
  #7  
Old 03-23-2009, 08:58 PM
image
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a P2P like network of login servers would pose a greater security risk than running Windows 3.1/95 on the current day Internet without a router. It is a wreckless way to run any service and also is a big reason why some may think a public login server is good.

Look at any common multiplayer game where a home user hosts the game. How many have you entered where they cheated or 'hacked' in some way just for their own amusement? The old EQEMu GuildWars suffered this fate multiple times not due to our passwords, but the security vulnerabilities that were in the EQEMu site.

Just something for thought.
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  #8  
Old 03-23-2009, 09:09 PM
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I am not sure what your solution is for the situation or what the better options might be.

1. We have the current Official Login Server moving to some new heavily upgraded hardware. The current one is running something like 256MBs of RAM, which is basically all used just by starting everything up. The new one should be many times that amount, which means we won't be file swapping, which would cause major performance issues like we are seeing now. It will also probably have a CPU at least 2X or more as fast as the current one does. Not to mention that it will be running MUCH newer versions of the same software, which can remove many performance issues and maybe even some of the security issues.

2. The new Official LS hosting will be managed by currently active members of the team who have the time required to devote to it to ensure that it is as stable as possible. That includes removing exploits and blocking attackers if/when needed.

3. There is already a fairly decent mini-login alternative to the Public Login Server now with the release of the devn00b/image version. If they ever remove the 20 user limit on it, it would be very easy for any server to use it as their full-time Private Login Server if they don't ever want to rely on the Public one we are wanting to provide.

4. Discussing the release of the Official LS code is pointless as it just isn't going to happen. This isn't my decision, and I honestly can't clearly tell you who's decision it is, but there are other reason not to release it even in a pre-compiled form. I am sure legality plays a big part in that, but as I said, it is pointless to even discuss it since it won't happen. You would be much better off to discuss the release of the new LS that image and devn00b created as the decision to release that source would be completely up to them.

There are really only 2 possible best-scenario setups in respects to having a 100% available Login Server.

1. Have 2 mirrored Login Servers that use a synchronized database so that if one is down, the other will take it's place or can easily be changed to by a simple change in the eqhost.txt files on the clients. This option would be nice, but it might open up security risks and it would be more maintenance and possibly costs to have 2 dedicated hosts just for the LS. Once the new one is in place, I fully expect a 99%+ uptime average and would it really be worth it to setup a mirror LS just to have an extra < 1% availability? I don't think so.

2. The best option IMO, would be to use the Official LS as a primary when it is up, but also give servers the option to run their own backup private LS, similar to the new one that devn00b and image made. Then, in order to use the same account for both Login Servers, we could create a new #password command that would let people set passwords in-game that would be saved to the accounts table. So, when they use the private LS, they just use the same password they set in game when they were logged in from the Public LS. Then, that private LS accesses the accounts table of the server and lets them authenticate that way. It would be pretty secure and probably not too hard to code it to be able to connect to both LSs at the same time. It would probably take someone of decent skill to make sure the dual connections was coded properly for the servers though. So, this option would mostly rely on image/devn00b removing the limit restrictions on their mini-login and also on someone coding the server to be able to use both Login Servers at once.

Oh and Aergad, I believe you mentioned in another thread that you only came to this community a few days ago (and your join date shows this month too). You came at about the worst possible time! I think that if you remain here and wait out this issue, you will find that we do a pretty awesome job of running things around here. We have been doing this stuff for years and have been getting better and better at it. The Login Server was the weakest link for a very long time because it wasn't under our control. Now that it will be, you will see that it will no longer be an issue of concern. For someone only being around for a few days, you sure have alot to say about how we should do things around here :P Please be patient and give us a chance to get control of the situation.

If you are really this worried about maximum availability, then I hope you aren't playing on just any random server. Very few servers last for more than a few months. Though, most of the more popular once have been around for a while (1 year+ up to 6 years). I would hate to see what happens if you were playing on a server that suddenly vanished one day! We have no control at all over that
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Last edited by trevius; 03-24-2009 at 05:19 AM..
  #9  
Old 03-23-2009, 09:41 PM
image
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Thanks PR manager. Btw your LS is down.
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  #10  
Old 03-23-2009, 09:42 PM
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Oh yeah...and btw...ours is up =p
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  #11  
Old 03-23-2009, 10:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by devn00b View Post
Oh yeah...and btw...ours is up =p
Yours was down for hours just last night! Unless that was maintenance (which I didn't see any notifications about on your site), then I wonder what will happen if you actually get some servers and players using your LS :P

It isn't "my" Login Server, just the only one I am concerned with. And technically, it isn't even the EQEmu team's LS yet either as the hosting hasn't been moved yet. We will have to wait and see what happens after the LS actually changes hands before jumping to any conclusions or having more e-peen contests! :P
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  #12  
Old 03-23-2009, 10:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trevius View Post
Yours was down for hours just last night! Unless that was maintenance (which I didn't see any notifications about on your site), then I wonder what will happen if you actually get some servers and players using your LS :P
Ours was indeed down, they installed new power transformers at the noc. I didn't post it simply because I had forgotten. Got the notice before we started to work on the new LS.

Still even with the downtime lastnight, our box has a much better uptime record than the current box and that is a fact that cannot be denied.
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  #13  
Old 03-23-2009, 10:30 PM
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Yes, your 3 days uptime with a few hours of downtime is probably comparable to the current public LS before it got to this extreme state a few weeks ago due to attacks and hacks and probably other things that rhyme with "acks" (just kidding). Even though it's stability has never been good since it moved to it's current host, it was never this bad until recently. At least then it would normally be up for nearly a month straight and then have a few days all in a row, where it would have hours of downtime. Then it would be back up and stable for a few more weeks. It just kept getting progressively worse and attacks were able to bring it to it's knees with minimal effort.

But again, you are comparing your new LS hosting which has been up for 2-3 days with hosting that is going to be replaced completely any day. If for any reason, the new hosting sucks and cannot be fixed, then yeah, people should probably consider making the switch. But, I wouldn't personally want to tell my users that all of their characters are gone and they have to start over so we don't have to wait a couple of days for the current LS to get replaced with a new improved one :P I prefer to wait it out and let the dust settle a bit. If I lose a few players due to that, then so-be-it.

That isn't to say people shouldn't make the switch. I am just trying to make sure people know that things aren't going to be the way they are around here much longer and for anyone willing to wait it out, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I have no problems with you guys or your LS, but it isn't the official LS of the project, and the project is what I am here for. It really is cool that you guys have provided an alternative to anyone who wishes to use it. I imagine if you could get 1 popular server to move there, they would get a ton of players moving their right now and many would probably stay even after the Official LS issues are worked out. Someone should take advantage of that if they have a new server with a currently low population and want to increase traffic to their server. But, it is a very hard decision for any existing server to make that move unless there was coding built into the EQEmu server source that would let us connect to both Login Servers at the same time. If that happened, I would gladly use it.
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  #14  
Old 03-23-2009, 10:32 PM
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I deny it.

Can I get the cliff notes version of this thread?
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Old 03-23-2009, 10:35 PM
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I deny it.

Can I get the cliff notes version of this thread?
doodman's e-peen is smaller than devn00b's e-peen
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