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Europe And Squad Expansion Plans And More!

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Yes! I can’t wait for squad! I’ve been playing since the earliest days of their early access so it’s safe to say I’m pretty keen. 


why are you even reading this bub

 

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Posted  Edited by Joshy · Hidden
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Gosh I think I remember writing about recycle admin applications to get admins on low pop servers, and people were very vocal.  Glad to see some type of acceptance in some modest form probably 4 ish years later :P

 

I think EU servers are a good move.  Something I didn't like about those is that the admins and server managers were often totally separated.  I think something that helps is just if it's the same game mode / same rules it would help if they had their permissions on both (US and EU) servers even though odds are they'll primarily play on one; also a good way to train new server managers if they have a successful counterpart.

 

I don't know anything about Squad.  Doesn't look bad.

Edited by Joshy

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3 minutes ago, Joshy said:

think EU servers are a good move.  Something I didn't like about those is that the admins and server managers were often totally separated.  I think something that helps is just if it's the same game mode / same rules it would help if they had their permissions on both (US and EU) servers even though odds are they'll primarily play on one; also a good way to train new server managers if they have a successful counterpart.

I definitely agree with this. If we have two servers in different locations running the same game mode/configuration, I believe the admin teams should be shared. I've always felt that way but don't remember why some people had an issue with that.

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I've received the following reply from IP2Location regarding getting the new IPv4 block geo-located to London, UK :) 

 

Quote

HI Christian,

 

Thank you. We will review and update the range in the future release.

           
Regards,

Kim Loong
IP2Location Customer Success Team

 

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Posted  Edited by Daddy Issues · Hidden
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Yooo squad server?? Lets goooo cant wait for it. Always wondered why we had a squad sub section. Didnt know we actually had a squad server in 2018

Edited by Daddy Issues

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I've sent the two LOAs I compiled for our new IPv4 block to Vultr and GSK. Once the BGP session is completed, I'll need to reconfigure all of our POP servers to announce the new IP block.

 

With that said, I've implemented functionality into Compressor with filters that allows Squad servers to run without any issues and I've been testing this most of tonight. This was more difficult than I expected because of how Squad/Unreal Engine does handshakes between the client and server.

 

I may be able to get the Squad server up by tomorrow to at least begin testing. I've also sent an email to the Squad Developer team regarding a server license since it appears the old one we have is invalid. I'm hoping to get a response on that in the next few days.

 

Thank you!

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We're looking for Squad admins! If you're interested or know somebody that would be, please fill out this form or have the individual do so.

 

Thank you!

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  • 3 months later...

European Expansion Update

I know it has been months since I've made this thread and we haven't seen any progress on our European expansion. I do apologize for the delay. The truth is the biggest roadblock we were facing until a few weeks ago was unfortunately something outside of our control and our hosting provider has been very busy. We haven't been getting charged for any of the machines we have in Europe as well which is good at least.

 

I'm happy to say that I have an update and we've made really great progress. We aren't all the way there yet, but we're close to having something that can be released.

 

Our biggest roadblock for a long time was the BGP session on our new UK POP not coming up successfully and this was an issue with our hosting provider. Since the BGP session wasn't activated, we weren't able to announce our IP blocks. This is due to RPF policies that prevent spoofing of packets. If we weren't announcing the IP blocks via BGP on the same switch the UK game server machine was connected to, the outbound filtering would classify our traffic as spoofed and drop the packets (RPF policies are very good to have for hosting providers as well). This simply didn't allow us to send traffic back from the game server machine directly.

 

While the above was unfortunate, there is a temporary solution to this that didn't become an option until a few weeks ago. We could simply send the outbound traffic through the nearest POP to the game server machine like our setup used to be before I made the IPIPDirect program here. Up until a few weeks ago, our hosting provider enforced strict policies on packets using the IPIP protocol which is what we needed. Therefore, this prevented us from using this solution until then.

 

Now this temporary solution does come with a situational pro/con and a few other cons which can be found below.

  • [Situational Pro/Con] Since outbound traffic is going back through the nearest POP server, it would stay within the Anycast network we have and not go back through the game server machine's network. This has the potential to either improve or worsen the latency depending on the route it takes. Staying within the network is always better since it's consistent and is the plan for the future. However, this specific implementation is not recommended due to the cons listed below.
  • [Con] The latency from the game server machine to the closest POP is ~6.7ms meaning this will add an additional 6.7ms to every packet/client.
  • [Con] This creates a single-point-of-failure meaning if the POP the game server machine is routing to goes down, no traffic will make it back to the clients.
  • [Con] This puts more stress onto the POP server since all outbound traffic from the game server machine is going through it.

I've put this temporary solution in-place until the BGP session issue is resolved which should be hopefully soon. After testing the solution, I am able to connect to the game servers for a few minutes or so, but run into another issue. My packets start dropping and I timeout for up to an hour. After doing a bunch of debugging and testing with IPIP traffic using my Packet Generator tools, our hosting provider and I believe this is due to filtering within the upstreams. Our hosting provider has put in a ticket to the upstreams to have them take a look at this issue. IPIP traffic itself isn't filtered, but it seems like there's something that scans the inner IP header's source and destination IP addresses and makes filters based off of those fields which is interesting.

 

This is currently the biggest roadblock to implementing our temporary solution since it impacts the ability to get the servers up and running smoothly. I'm hoping we can get this issue resolved soon and once we do, this should allow our server divisions to setup the new Europe servers for expansion!

 

Other than that, I also gained back access to the UK POP and updated Compressor's config so once the BGP session is active, Compressor will be forwarding traffic to the right game server machines (I was an idiot and locked myself out last time). This was another step in getting the BGP session resolved on the UK POP.

 

Small Change To IP/ASN Listing Program

I just wanted to mention some changes I made last night to my IP/ASN listing Go program here. I ran into issues last night when performing initial Europe server testing when on server startup, it would not connect to Steam and web traffic was also not flowing properly (e.g. requests to a REST API). It turns out the IP prefix lists I have Compressor pull from were blank and this was due to my IP/ASN listing program. The API I use for this called BGPView was rate-limiting a majority of our API requests. Therefore, I ended up implementing functionality to do the following.

 

  • When scanning the lists/ directory, I've added an option to randomize the lists to update.
  • Added a max lists option which is a cap on how many lists that can be updated per interval.
  • Added an option that doesn't write to the list when any ASN lookup fails for that specific list.

 

This has been working great so far and this is just one less thing to worry about for the future.

 

Anyways, that's all I have for now. Once things are up and running, I will be making a global announcement. From there, it will be up to the divisions to announce updates for the servers they plan to expand in within Europe.

 

Thank you for your patience regarding the Europe expansion and I hope you enjoyed the update!

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