Server Stability and Lag go hand in hand...

[Zora]

So, here's a choice for the community. As of maybe a week ago the server has been on a dedicated host. You will also have probably noticed that that also resulted in a drastic increase in lag, as well as a huge increase in uptime. I narrowed the problem down to the antigrief measures. I can remove these, but then the server is not protected, which would force me to go with either me protecting everybody's stuff, or getting factions or towny, in which land is automatically protected. So here's the pros and cons of each:

Dedicated host (current)
Pros
-99.9% uptime
Cons
-Forced to use an rpg plugin
OR
-No antigrief measures
OR
-Put up with the lag
-Everything with a dedicated hosted server takes 5 times as longer to do anything, so fixes or other repairs will be not be instantaneous

Hosted by me (a few weeks ago)
Pros
-antigrief measures
-Less lag
-Things can be fixed almost instantaneously
Cons
-About an 85% uptime
-Downtimes are random, but mostly happen at night on weekdays

I leave the choice to you guys. I don't mean for the pros and cons to be biased in any way.

[spleenter]

local. 85% uptime is a small price to pay for lag free mining.

[Beetle]

Why would you be forced to use an rpg plugin with dedicated?

[Avalon]

Use the RPG plugin and ignore all rpg aspects of it.

[Zora]

Why would you be forced to use an rpg plugin with dedicated?

With a dedicated server I cannot use the antigrief measures that I usually use so I'd have to go into region protecting. I could get a bunch of moderators and stuff to do it, but I've seen how that goes with other server. It can work well, but on small servers like this, it isn't pretty. So, I'd need a plugin that can leave the protecting up to the user. Of course, I can't just let the user protect whatever they want. That would get out of hand. Because of this there needs to be some limits. That is what the rpg plugins like towny or factions offer. I could go with an economy and have people pay for their regions, but that gets pretty messy and is not fun to set up. That, and that plugin hasn't been updated for a while. I still use it on the server, but I don't trust it for that sort of thing. And Its really hard to set up the plugin to do that. There are other plugins that hook into the plugin and puts in much more user friendly commands, but I tried that once and it didn't work very well, and was too complex to use. If I can't get people to lock their chests, how will I get them to lock their regions? Yes, now chests automatically lock, but what could I do? Have all the chunks that people visit get protected under their name? The rpg plugins (factions, towny) are tried and true, and are meant for this situation.

[Beetle]

Towny is awesome, but doesn't Big Brother work anymore?

[Zora]

Towny is awesome, but doesn't Big Brother work anymore?

Bigbrother has been dead for a while now. The alternatives are Logblock and EagleEye. Both of which I hate, but LogBlock seems to be the better of the two. They both require a mysql database. I have access to one, but it is very, very, very slow. This is the cause of the lag. Without that database, I can't use these plugins. On my home hosted server, the mysql server and the minecraft server are hosted in the same box, so there isn't any lag between the two.

[Beetle]

That really sucks. That was maybe the best mod out of all the SMP mods out there. You could just rollback within a defined range. It was soooooo wonderful.


Now that I know, I can ask this: Doesn't World Guard have some sort of plot protection?

[Zora]

Doesn't World Guard have some sort of plot protection?

Yes, worldguard does have a region protection system. That's its main purpose. However, I'm not going to protect everybody's stuff. That will take forever and will not be easy to do. Theres always that one person who wants his entire house protected. Any by house his entire basement complex about the same size and complexity as a stronghold. I'm not protecting 16 chunks for his house. I could hire a bunch of mods to help me with this, but because the server is so small, still, things get really ugly really fast with that approach.

I notice with the bigger servers this is their anti-grief measure. It works great if it is a huge server. However, my server is still at the size that a block logging plugin is the best way to go and that region protections will not work well.

[Beetle]

Fair enough.