direwolf20 1.12 [Tips and Guidelines] Reducing Lag

[Ness27]

Tips for Reducing Lag!

Hello and welcome to an informal set of guidelines and tips for reducing lag. One continual concern faced when hosting a modded Minecraft server, like everything else in the world, is performance. How well the server's performance is and how long it can continually perform at this rate. (Analytical tools such as TPS) Much of the time, poor Minecraft server performance is blamed on the machine hosting the server (seems intuitive, right?). However, as Brunyman has explained: 

On 12/31/2019 at 6:36 PM, brunyman said:

We have 8 dedicated servers, all of them are running on i7 gen7 CPU except for one that is a Ryzen 7 first gen. By the end of January and beginning of February we will replace 6 of them with new intel i7 gen10 and Ryzen 7 3rd gen hardware. 

Computing power and memory speed/capacity are not necessarily the criminals here. As it has been explained through our discord, "We run servers with 64gb of ram, yet we allocate 10-12gb per server. We use the rest as a ram drive to load the world, because ms lag for the world causes tps lag- ram will only lag the server if it caps out, which it has yet to do. Only way a 10gb server would run out of memory would be if a memory leak was discovered." It is even recommended from Sponge contributors that 4-6gb is optimal. Without diving too deep into the actual performance of a Minecraft server under certain conditions and arguments, let us take a look at what diminishes server performance IN-GAME. 

Ticks per Second (TPS)

 

The main obstacle faced in-game, is lag. (The entire focus of this post) Server lag described in Minecraft as TPS. TPS stands for Ticks per Second. The maximum speed (Ticks per a second) is 20. At this speed, this is the fastest the server can perform and distinguish the changes in the game's perspective. Each "tick" will recalculate and adjust every mechanic of the rendered server. This is an absolute value, in the sense a Minecraft server cannot perform better than 20 TPS (one tick per 50ms). What causes 'lag' is when a tick is skipped or delayed because the server is still completing the last tick. This results in the server skipping ticks and eventually lagging and causing all the issues we hate to see. The following information will help you become aware of what usually diminishes server TPS. 

The Smeltery (Tinker's Construct)

 

The Smeltery can be the culprit of generating lag. In general, a smeltery is just fine. It is the few absurd sizes of smelteries that harm the server performance. Large smelteries cause problems more often than you'd realize. The following picture is a fine-sized smeltery:

Theres no reason to make it any larger, please.

You may also want to avoid, full automation on smelteries. The following picture is an example of something not to do:

Mob Farms

 

Badly constructed mob farms are the demise of server performance. Mob farms are continually the culprits of lag generation. Numerous mobs stacking on each other can eventually overwhelm the server. 

Now this is a profiled result from one of the servers. You can see the usage rate and time per a tick for stacked EXP orbs and mobs is high. This high usage percentage can be causing quite an impact on the server's performance. The best way to avoid this; 

• Only spawn an amount of mobs you can kill ( do not have 15 spawners and 1 mob crusher )
• Use EXP Vacuums to collect EXP orbs
• Turn off spawners 
• Have an efficient setup ( Expect your setup to not lose power or storage capacity for drops )

Here is an example of what happened when power was lost to a mob crusher:
Not a fun case to resolve ^

-Don't be that player

One Chunk Bases

 

Another big hit to server performance and lag is having an entire base packed into a single, chunk-loaded base. This is a nightmare, as this chunk will be the chunk that delays an action and causes the skipping of ticks. (Low TPS - Server lag). The following picture is an example of what not to do:

 

Instead, spread your base out:

 

 The Quantum Quarry

 

Not just the specific quantum quarry can cause a hit to TPS, many quarries from various mods do. The following is an example:

This would be common to see. High percentage of use for Quarries, multiple calls, and a low TPS. The craftersland team will not force anyone to not use a quarry, I just recommend using other methods to obtain the respective resources.

 

Note: Players found to be purposely generating lag will be punished accordingly.

 

[kevinkk525]

If you don't make clear rules and even ban lagging items, people will continue to create lag. Don't expect people to build wise, enforce it.