Zec just posted this information in another forum:
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showpost.php?p=719579&postcount=29
....
Hi All
I have been monitoring this for the past couple of weeks, mainly when I'm answering tickets on the helpdesk.
I have noted that on most days, the free servers 'free' up between 11am and 2pm AU-EST (GMT+10), various times in that time period.
This works out to the following times are different points around the globe (you'll need to adjust for specific time zones):
Denver - 6PM
New York - 8PM
--------------- (this is midnight - times above are the previous day to those below)
London - 1AM
Paris - 2AM
Brisbane - 11AM
Denver - 9PM
New York - 11PM
---------------
London - 4AM
Paris - 5AM
Brisbane - 2PM
Now, looking at above, we have the following times.
New York/Denver are mid to late evening. 6-9 for Denver, 8-11 for New York.
London and Paris are late night/early morning. 1-4 for London, 2-5 for Paris.
Brisbane (and most GMT+10ish time zones, so much of Asia, New Zealand, etc) are around the 11am-2pm area.
Now, a few things come into this. First, 6pm, most people eat dinner. 8PM, people tend to watch TV or play games. Once we get to about 8-9pm, most younger kids go to bed. Remember, the majority of Trainz users are still younger users, particularly those that download as much as they can from the free server (note, not saying all
). Many of the older kids also do homework. In Aus, these are business hours. Hence we would also see less server usage at these times.
Hence we see less activity on the DLS. Surprisingly, most users will download whilst they use the computer, and stop/pause when they eat/rest/sleep. Particularly many younger users, who are told to turn the computer off when not using it. As the US tends toward having the largest proportion of users (mixed with UK/Europe, you'll likely have the majority of Trainz users), you'll have your least server usage around these times. Once we get to 6am-7am in Europe, we'll see increased server usage again, although mainly only weekends at these times.
Now, we get weekends. Many have noticed that the DLS tends to play up on weekends... Well, we do get a heck of a lot of downloads at these times. It's likely that we would see fairly high download numbers between about 9am and 9pm (any time zone) on Saturday, and around midday to 8pm on Sunday (possibly 9am-8pm, depending on the region).
Now, we throw the end of school, and holidays, in the mix. Hit early-mid December, and most kids have finished, or are doing/finishing exams (I know in Aus, most exams are in November - Year 12 VCE exams actually start on the last Friday of October normally). Hence they start to play Trainz more than other times of the year, since they have more time available. We then see more downloads at this time. This accounts for a lot of downloading... Now, we come to the actual school holidays (and then Christmas holidays), and the number of users trying to download gets higher again.
Now, the above is approximated. Based off both experience as having been a student only a few years ago (finished Year 12 in 2008), and of having watch the FTP logs over the past few weeks.
WARNING - Below is using 'simple' numbers, figures shown are NOT the actual figures, they are to help show what is happening.
Now, lets say (as an easy to work with figure) that the free server allows 100 connections at a time. Generally, we may have, say, 50-75 connections. However, we hit the holiday period, and all of a sudden we have 100 connections (note, we did increase this, but showing it here will make things rather messy, so I'll stick with '100'). Now, at few times in the day, we see this drop to 90 connections for a short period. But it then goes back to 100 connections.
Now, when it hits 100 connections, it stops any other attempts. So, if we have 120 connection attempts, 20 attempts will be blocked - including the log. Now, a few of those 100 connections just want 1 item, and then they're done. When they're done, someone else gets a connection. There will also be a number of people who are downloading large lists of items, who's connection will be in use for possibly hours. In this case, you just have to wait. Unfortunately, when it gets full, you may find that your connection drops.
Now, with this, there's two options (well, there's others that go with, but two 'main' options). Spend yet more money and increase bandwidth further for the free service (and hence number of available connections), or wait for the load to drop. Now, there's a problem with each. In the first, we use First Class Tickets to help cover the costs for the DLS, if we don't have enough FCT sales we can't increase the bandwidth (or improve the service). In the second, the DLS is full for long periods - this looks bad on us and is something that we do not want. The problem is, without enough FCT sales, we can't increase connections, which means we end up with the second. For the majority of the year, we find a sort of balance between both. We see some downtime, but we also see a lot of uptime.
It's when we have a lot of users attempting to access the free servers that we see issues.
Sorry for the very long post, however hopefully is shows a bit more detail of what is happening.
We are not forcing you to buy FCT's. However, you also need to remember that the free service is limited, and it can be overloaded. At the moment, there's just far too many people trying to access the free server at the one time.
For those who were around 12 months ago, you might remember what happened with the release of TS2010. Due to the number of people downloading the digital download, we too many connections on both the free and first class servers. This knocked out all downloading until we setup mirrors for the digital downloads onto other servers, and even then the DLS did go offline a few times when lots of people tried to download other files.
I'm pretty sure the same also occurred when TS2009 was released, although not quite as much.
I also remember many times back in 2004 when the free server did fill regularly, although again not quite as bad as right now...
__________________
Zec Murphy
Customer Support Rep
Auran Games
=======================================
One question I have for Zec regarding his post....
The question .... if a person gets logged into the free server....downloads what he/she needs.... but DOES NOT LOG OFF...ie. close CM... is that connection still in place.... or does it time-out after a period of time??
Thanks
