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Plea from a Programmer: The Server Problem


Xaufin

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1 hour ago, laurita_peque said:

Thanks

I don't need to check the wikipedia to know how a DDOS works. I already sent a private message to Lisa with some opinions about some kind of workaround to protect the server, that's not ideal, but could work for the future. I guess they can have some other better ideas.

Obviously this is another thread (Claps for you for knowing that much). And it doesn't change the thing that we know they already attacked us. And that's make probably that 3d will be an objective in the future again. The thing is, the server should have been protected already. It wasn't. It's a fact.

Regards

Yet, you seem to not realize how it works, nor that it is an APDoS attack, nor that it's not always an easy thing to "fix".

And, you can keep your insulting words to yourself... "Obviously this is another thread (Claps for you for knowing that much)."

 

Edited by pretty
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Just for your information. Clapping is not insulting. I guess you can check what is it in the wikipedia as well.

And yes. I know what's an APDoS. And no, I don't think it's easy to mitigate. But in one month should be more than enough to be ready for this.

I would like to know where I said it was easy. If it would be easy I would have expected to be fixed in a couple of days. But for a complex problem 1 month should be more than Ok. Is that  hard to know?

Do you know what's gonna happen in some weeks? 3dxchat will suffer another attack. And then what? Again with the same? It's complicated?

Obviously a workaround has to be found.

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26 minutes ago, laurita_peque said:

Just for your information. Clapping is not insulting. I guess you can check what is it in the wikipedia as well.

And yes. I know what's an APDoS. And no, I don't think it's easy to mitigate. But in one month should be more than enough to be ready for this.

I would like to know where I said it was easy. If it would be easy I would have expected to be fixed in a couple of days. But for a complex problem 1 month should be more than Ok. Is that  hard to know?

Do you know what's gonna happen in some weeks? 3dxchat will suffer another attack. And then what? Again with the same? It's complicated?

Obviously a workaround has to be found.

You made it perfectly clear you was clapping because I knew this is a thread...  "Obviously this is another thread (Claps for you for knowing that much)."

You was being insulting, and now it is 100% obvious you are here to troll the forum.  I am ignoring you now because I do not feed forum trolls.

Edited by pretty
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Well, on the plus side of the server being down, I can finally do on my weekends what I begin each of my "weekends" saying I am going to do.

I have been wanting to learn how to animate and make games on Unreal or Unity. I have bought a bunch of lessons on Udemy to learn: Blender, Unreal and Unity. But, every weekend I end up going into 3DX and spending most of that day's free time wandering around there. Now that I can't go into 3DX that temptation is gone. Finally I don't have an excuse not to start going through my lessons and maybe learn enough to start working on my game idea.

Sucks the servers are down, but as they say, every dark cloud has a silver lining.

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I gotta question.

I know very little about DDOS attacks, but can't you have several addresses and switch to another when an attacker hits one in order to make it expensive and time consuming for the attacker?? Can't you  keep rotating connections??

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17 hours ago, Riela said:

I actually remember it took them around 2 years to implement a private message from friendlist. Back then you had to write an gift to a person to meet at some location just to open chat if you didn't had them added outside of the game or on forums. (mind you a paid gift as there was no free xgold at the time). I think 5 gifts were like 3 euro in xgold back then?

I bet most people know don't know that.

Edited due to being tired as f.

I completely forgot about that!  You're right!

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4 hours ago, THX said:

I gotta question.

I know very little about DDOS attacks, but can't you have several addresses and switch to another when an attacker hits one in order to make it expensive and time consuming for the attacker?? Can't you  keep rotating connections??

I suspect that's just as likely to knock people out of their conections, and you'd need enough unique addresses to rotate between.

I think one of the most common approaches is to give each user login a unique ID that's validated with their subscription/login, signifying they are allowed to connect. And then process other attempted connections without adding them to the server until validated, ignoring those without a valid login key. So at worst the DDoS would crash or lag the login queue itself instead of the actual game servers. Nobody would get disconnected but it could still stop players from logging in? I've never implemented multiplayer but validating logins before connecting them to servers seems like the safe way.

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22 minutes ago, Xaufin said:

I suspect that's just as likely to knock people out of their conections, and you'd need enough unique addresses to rotate between.

I think one of the most common approaches is to give each user login a unique ID that's validated with their subscription/login, signifying they are allowed to connect. And then process other attempted connections without adding them to the server until validated, ignoring those without a valid login key. So at worst the DDoS would crash or lag the login queue itself instead of the actual game servers. Nobody would get disconnected but it could still stop players from logging in? I've never implemented multiplayer but validating logins before connecting them to servers seems like the safe way.

As I said, I knowe nothing, but none of my servers ever crashed under a DDOS at Softlayer/ IBM Cloud..

Edited by THX
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@laurita_peque Been there... it totally sucks and it costs for clothes and better avatars and if you go there for sex?  Forget it... find me something that is actually better than this...

So they went under attack for the past month and yeah the server keeps going down.  They are getting ready to open new servers as soon as they get it stabilized. However it's going to have it's problems that we will report as it's going to be a free test server. I've been here since Jan 2018, made a mistake before saying 1 and a half years. Time flies when you're having fun and didn't realize I've been on for 2 and a half years.  So one week of down time and a month of shutdowns is nothing compared great time I've spent here. I am a member of another Virtual World which doesn't even compare to this but it's tons better than SL and it's huge learning curve. Everyone will be compensated for the down time as is posted by Lisa.  So just chill out, sit tight and the wait instead of bitching and insulting other players and the staff. If you can do better, then go make your own game and show us how it's done.

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Look ah trust tha Devs want tings to run smooth and im sure they do their utmost.

They are working on a new Server and im sure eet will be bug ridden hence a test server but even after all tha testing im sure we will add to tha bugs we already have.

Yips eet sux to be us right nows and there are peeps here in game with experience that could be assets but thats up to tha Devs, one, sharing information about their game, two, accepting hilp and three saving face. They want to look like they know wot they are doing which is understandable despite all tha talk that they dont.

Ah believe tings will get better but at tha moment eets a little chaotic fo them juggling all the probs that are mounting and tha stress of a community that is pretty unforgiving when stressed.

We need a solid Server, solid Bug Fixes, a Solid Creative Team adding new usable content that has longevity and will be well used and Solid communication to tha player base that insists on knowing wot is happening, which is understandable seeing as we are living in tha "information age" :P

Good Luck Devs, wow us with your skeels and lets make 3DX a Game that peeps rave about, because eet has a forward looking well prepared and skilled team keeping eet on tha rails and a player base that knows eet :)

 

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What I don’t understand is why the Devs here don’t just -use- this community. 
We have a rather passionate group of people here, and as shown in the 32bit version with Rochii’s DLL, a lot of folks with knowledge of coding and such. 
 

Hell the last few pose and clothes updates where 90% player made. 
 

Why not just Use those skilled people if they’re willing?

Basically hire them or give them some minor compensation and let them do their thing. 
Most of them are part of this community so they have the ear of the masses. 
They’d know what people want or don’t want. 
 

And it lets the Devs focus on the background hardware. 
 

Just a thought. 

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1 hour ago, NakedNikki said:

@laurita_peque Been there... it totally sucks and it costs for clothes and better avatars and if you go there for sex?  Forget it... find me something that is actually better than this...

So they went under attack for the past month and yeah the server keeps going down.  They are getting ready to open new servers as soon as they get it stabilized. However it's going to have it's problems that we will report as it's going to be a free test server. I've been here since Jan 2018, made a mistake before saying 1 and a half years. Time flies when you're having fun and didn't realize I've been on for 2 and a half years.  So one week of down time and a month of shutdowns is nothing compared great time I've spent here. I am a member of another Virtual World which doesn't even compare to this but it's tons better than SL and it's huge learning curve. Everyone will be compensated for the down time as is posted by Lisa.  So just chill out, sit tight and the wait instead of bitching and insulting other players and the staff. If you can do better, then go make your own game and show us how it's done.

I agree with you, but people who started to play 3dxchat during quarantine – they just have no other experience. And there is a lot of them. Their whole 3dxchat experience or at least most part of it was filled with everyday disconnects. So I can understand their frustration and anger. 

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29 minutes ago, Derai said:

What I don’t understand is why the Devs here don’t just -use- this community. 
We have a rather passionate group of people here, and as shown in the 32bit version with Rochii’s DLL, a lot of folks with knowledge of coding and such. 
 

Hell the last few pose and clothes updates where 90% player made. 
 

Why not just Use those skilled people if they’re willing?

Basically hire them or give them some minor compensation and let them do their thing. 
Most of them are part of this community so they have the ear of the masses. 
They’d know what people want or don’t want. 
 

And it lets the Devs focus on the background hardware. 
 

Just a thought. 

Many of us have been thinking about that very same question for a very long time. Tbh idk. Im surprised we got a player to make the past patches all together tbh.

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2 hours ago, Derai said:

What I don’t understand is why the Devs here don’t just -use- this community. 
We have a rather passionate group of people here, and as shown in the 32bit version with Rochii’s DLL, a lot of folks with knowledge of coding and such. 
 

Hell the last few pose and clothes updates where 90% player made. 
 

Why not just Use those skilled people if they’re willing?

Basically hire them or give them some minor compensation and let them do their thing. 
Most of them are part of this community so they have the ear of the masses. 
They’d know what people want or don’t want. 
 

And it lets the Devs focus on the background hardware. 
 

Just a thought. 

I spent three weeks dealing against DDoS at work . I would help as well, but i understand why they prefer to keep players out of this.

There could be some legal issue and considering how some players already react just because they pay monthly, i can't imagine how crazy they would turn if they started to bring real help.

Sometimes the best way to help is just to wait patiently and don't harass people already in trouble.

 

Also there is no way to know how serious this is, no matter what experience you have or how much skillfull you are. It's presomptuous to think the ideas we are several to have here wasn't studied by the devs already and they are just looking at the ship as it sink because they are helpless.

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@NakedNikki @Xizl

I am here since 2016. Not since some months. People here talk like I have to be grateful for the service when it was good.

And I was, and the way I am grateful is paying the service. The first year I was paying monthly. In the same way I pay for having the service, and if I don't pay I don't get the service. The opposite is totally fair. They ask for the money for enjoying. And I demand for the service for my money. I don't blame them for that. It's the business, and it's the logic. But also logic that we demand the service we are paying.

It's that simple.

It's nice that people who is here since 2018 says that game always worked good. But it's not true. There was problems with the profiles users and "deleted information" that could be collected from outside. That's security issues.

The design of the architecture is not the best.

The database shouldn't be exposed. I really cannot understand how the disk with the players information is damaged when the database should be working in a dedicated machine (even if it's' virtual) communicating with the service by a private interface. And only the middleware being exposing the ports the client uses for working with the server.

The server should be stateless, with all the storage in the database. In this way the migration would be easy to do.

For example, AWS provides a service for Kubernetes clusters (Masters) for 0.1$/h + 0,04$/h per virtual cpu and 0,004$ per GB of RAM
To this some money in storage should have been provided (100GB/year of gp2 would be 120€)

with a container with 8 virtual cores and 16GB of ram.
for less than 5000€ more or less could have a realiable infraestructure that works fine and is balanced when the pod is down.

So many approach can work, AWS is expensive and another way could work, Kubernetes is an option, but for this platform I don't think is needed. With a couple of virtual machines for the server, a load balancer, and another couple of servers for the Database In Active/passive should work fine, and being resilient.

In Hetzner Cloud you can get hosts with 8vcores + 16GB RAM + 160GB disk/space for 18.92€/montly and 4vcores + 8GB of ram + 160GB disk space for 14.76€

2 of both and a plus for load balancing, and probably another one for an API would be less than 2000$ yearly (around 1000$ in fact). But in Hetzner you have to mount your own security. It's cheap, but hard to manage if you are not good enough with Operating System.

But what's not valid is just saying is complicated.

----

In other way the DDOS could be mitigated using another small server for granting permission in the firewall to the other machine. Exposing only the API.
There're so many strategies that could be done. This post. In theory was done for giving ideas for this. i already sent some of them by private message to Lisa.
I want the game to work, cause I enjoy it with my friends. But it doesn't change the thing that way the issue is being faced is not acceptable.

Regards

Edited by laurita_peque
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When I joined in very late 2015 the highest number of players in a room had been 97. The rooms, there were only 2 private rooms where players could rearrange the furniture were not much in comparison to now. There were some that use a cheat engine to lift a few tables and had a stage, that was unique. Then a dll came out and so did the builders. Rooms made out of tables, sex poses that took a lot of imagination, creatures made from room dividers then the game did something not many games do, they upgraded. Better graphics different surroundings in the rooms then another upgrade. This was followed by bitching that there are no updates and players started making programs where a builder could make a picture, make perfect circles, then came the room editor upgrade. This game has changed a lot, I played other games that are older and still play like they did many years ago. This game went from 97 players max in a room to 230 max in one room at one time. It went from one room hosting a big party with 100 people having 70% of the visible players to various big parties with 80+ people. I was looking at the numbers one day and the top 4 rooms had more than 70 players each. So to answer the how many play per game has to be around 5,000. The people here are on different time zones and due to insomnia (thank you military) I log in at different times seeing what is going on. I remember when the game have 7 rooms opened and if all the counted people in the rooms were packed into a room they would have 40 players, it is rare now that the game has 40 players in visible rooms. One has to remember that many host private parties, group parties or for friends only. So even if we see 100 players in the rooms combine in one hour, there can be way more in private rooms. Then there are the people that come on every now and then and so on. Now I did not mean to rant, but fact is this game come a long way. I have played SKYRIM and it has crashed and other X-box games and computer games that have thousands of programmers crash and it takes them days to get it back up. I don't know how many people are programming the game but I am grateful that they don't just give up since we choose to bitch compare it with other games whose programmers have not upgraded the game once in a multitude of years.. Just saying..

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I have always wondered how many people this could handle before problems started occuring. I'm thinking peak times there are about 600 on. 

Older worlds can handle 1000's on at once and 10's of thousands like SL.  They had to go through growing pains and it is normal 3DX has some.

But I just can't believe they don't have back ups to revert to when your whole buisness and income relies on software.

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I'm also a software developer with some experience with server operations, ddos attacks, and a little bit of unity.... and almost 4 years experience playing here...

1) all the helpful suggestions about using AWS, Kubernetes clusters, etc. all depend on the scale-out architecture for Unity (which I don't know much about). You have to start with the scale-out architecture requirements of the game FIRST and then go from there as what your options are for better performance, reliability and cost. And I understand why gizmo/devs don't want to necessarily share that level of detail with the general player community, though I do hope they not too proud to consult with other game devs and hosting companies who have experience with these issues.

2) Mitigating ddos attacks is not simple, but its not rocket science either. As others have pointed out, there are established methods for doing it, but it does depend on how the game client-server communication works, and how that will change with the new scaled-out server architecture.

3) There is NO excuse for not having a RAID-configured disk system for the server(s) so that if one physical disk fails (which is almost guaranteed to happen every few years, and often after a reboot), there will be very little (or no) downtime because the data from the failed disk is replicated in real time to other disk(s).  If in fact there was a disk failure.... shame on you devs for not configuring the servers with RAID (or ordering a hosted server configuration with RAID disks from the hosting provider).  That's "server ops 101". 

4) No matter what range of numbers you use, no one is getting really rich operating this game (I won't bore you with the math). The only way to make good money on it would be expand the player base as no one is going to pay more than we are today. And the only way to do that is to build a more scalable and reliable sever platform to support a lot of users.

In general, since none of us (probably) have the inside knowledge that the devs have, so let's all get pissed off about it, then sit back and relax and wait for them to fix it.... and hopefully learn from their mistakes in the process..

Chirp Chirp Tweet Tweet

- Robin

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20 hours ago, laurita_peque said:

@NakedNikki @Xizl

In other way the DDOS could be mitigated using another small server for granting permission in the firewall to the other machine. Exposing only the API.
There're so many strategies that could be done. This post. In theory was done for giving ideas for this. i already sent some of them by private message to Lisa.
I want the game to work, cause I enjoy it with my friends. But it doesn't change the thing that way the issue is being faced is not acceptable.

Regards

Well there you go... you sent a message to Lisa... that's all you had to do in the first place instead of inciting a riot in the forums lol j/k

I hope it works out for you but Rochi had this place rocking with her dll tweak and she disappeared suddenly when they upgraded to the 64 bit server not implementing her tweaks.  J/S There are people here doing a lot of work to donate to the game but it's like pulling eyeteeth to get anyone to implement them. I mean sure they have problems with what was made because it didn't match something but they could have easily accepted it and fixed it the way they wanted to instead of telling them to go fix it the way they want it.  I think it's a pride problem or a superiority complex but hey, good luck with that. In the mean time I'll just smile and bear it since they don't look at the forums anyway, or at least don't answer so it's all just pointless.  

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