Here's a good tip for those using a router for any internet access whether running a server or not. You can make your connection much smoother following this advice.
Did you know that a router adds 8 bits to every packet that comes in or out of your router?? This information identifies which machine on your internal network that the particular packet needs to reach.
Since the maximum packet size your router will send is 1500 and also most nic cards mtu (maximum transmission unit) size is defaulted to 1500, guess what
?
Everytime a packet comes from or to your router, the router has to split the packet into 2 because it received 1500 and needs to add the 8 bits before sending it on, therefore your router now has to send 2 packets instead of one.
If you are running a server ( or even if your not) you are forcing the router to work twice as hard when it doesnt have too. You can get much more bandwith and smoother player performance by doing the following.
If you change the mtu size on all of the nic cards on all of your internal machines to 1492, you will now be sending on 1492 to the router in each packet. That means that the router will take that packet , add its 8 for a total of 1500 and send it on its way. You have now cut the number of packets ( and work) that the router needs to perform.
When I did this about 2 years ago, I was able to add a couple of players to my server and also the players said it was a lot less laggy.
There are many free programs out there that will allow you to reset the mtu size (for those who don't know how to find it in the reg). Do a search and I am sure you will find several. also visit places like dslreports.com and read their tweaks sections from top to bottom. there are many things you can do to your system to get better performance for your server. By the way, running your server on something like win98 will require a daily reboot. I still run on nt4 workstation and my server can run weeks without needing a reboot. NT4 has a much better designed network section.
Well thats my tip for you newbie admins (and maybe some of you oldies,
). There are new things to learn for all of us everyday. Enjoy.