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Very recently I've set up a UT server (standalone) with a cable connection. The hardware platform is definitely above adequate but I'm wondering about speeding up connections.
Can anyone give me any direction in this? The server is sitting on Win98 and my connection is decent, so I'm not looking to 'uncap' my connection, I just want to be able to host more than 4 peeps without significant lag.
Any advice, tweaks, reghacks, patches, URLs or other would be greatly appreciated.
You should be getting about 40kbits per person to get good performance. Check with the speed test from DSLreports to determine if you have enough bandwidth before you even start (if you don't it is likely that there are too many people in your loop, or they've capped you at 128k)
One parameter you must set is the MaxClientRate in the UnrealTournament.ini file. I believe you should set this to 5000 as a starting point and go from there. A higher number will give more data to players at the cost of the number of possible players. If the number is too high, pings will get out of hand. Aim for the best pings to be stable at 50-80 (depending on you location and the player's connections). Epic says anything above 7000 is unnecessary.
An obvious parameter to set also is the spectators. They draw bandwidth. Keep it to one (yourself) unless you have a reason for more.
Epic has stated that the cache size should be left at 4 MB (default). They say a dedicated server doesn't need the cache a standalone gaming machine does.
An issue I uncovered running my own server is removing the server from behind my router eliminated packet loss. P/L is a serious problem. Keep track of P/L using F6. http://www.planetunreal.com/TheAdminPage/
