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"NFO offers an outstanding service that is matched no where else in my opinion." - Minion Order
"My ping ranges from 23-29 and I keep perfect fps as well as 0 choke/loss. Registry is AWSOME, the forums are AWSOME, the tools available are AWSOME!!" - Flying-Squirrel
"... after having (our) nfo server up for 30mins people started to flock to us. They were like (our) pings are so good and it's so smooth. I can't thank everyone at nfo enough. You all are hands down the best server / people out there." - Tomconno
"Most GSP tend to have their servers going to the crapper within months but not NFo, they been on top of everything day by day, and their support is still ranked #1 in my book." - IcEWoLF
"If you're thinking about switching to NFO, do it. I don't know of any other server company in which you can get live support 24/7 and have someone ... nicely explain to you how servers work for almost THREE hours! This company continues to have excellent customer service." - kmal2t
"Best service and support you can ever imagine, price could be triple and after dealing with NFO, i would pay it without blinking!! " - Mystery
"Nuclearfallout is hands down the best public server GSP out there..." - ix007
Read hundreds of other real, self-submitted testimonials from our customers!
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+ Frequently Asked Questions - Lag
Q: My ping is higher than usual! What's going on?
A: There are various reasons why your ping might be higher than usual on your server. Almost always, such lag
can be fixed. Here are some of the possible reasons, how to tell if they apply to you, and how they might be fixed.
| Possible cause for the lag |
How to tell if this is the case |
How to fix it |
| Routing issues between you and the server. For instance, your ISP might be overloaded temporarily,
a router along the route either to or from you and the server could be having problems, or your traffic might be routing
across the country and back. |
Run a tracert to the server. You can do this by clicking the link through the Trace page of the control panel, or by clicking Start->Run, and typing cmd.exe in the box (if you have
XP) or command.com in the box (if you have Windows 9x). A black DOS box will pop up. In it, type the command "tracert
(ip)", without the quotes, and with (ip) replaced with the IP address of the server. Then hit enter. A traceroute to
the server will appear in the box. -->
If this tracert ends with high latencies at the server (higher than usual for you), your problem may be bad
routing. If this is the case, right-click on the titlebar, and click Edit->Mark; then click and select the entire traceroute
information, including your original command, unclick, and hit enter. Open up an email to us and Right click->Paste it into
the email. Add a line stating your current IP address. Then send it off. |
We will analyze your tracert information and run our own tests to help you determine where the problem is. In
most cases, the problem will be your ISP, and we will recommend that you contact them to fix it for you. Sometimes the
routing can also be fixed on our end. |
| You are running HLGuard with overly aggressive settings. |
HLGuard is a notorious CPU hog. If you have the wallhack block or aimbot checking enabled, everyone will likely get
lag in-game. |
Luckily, the wallhack block is now provided by the built-in VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) for mods that support it, so
you are generally safe in turning that off in addons/hlguard/hlguard.cfg. Aimbot checking in my experience does not
catch many people and often arrives at false positives, so it is relatively safe to disable as well.
With mods other than CS or DoD, you might consider running a different anti-cheat such as Cheating Death (also available
from the United Admins site). Cheating Death is extremely
effective at eliminating cheats, although it needs to be run client-side as well as on the server.
Remember: The best anti-cheat is a good admin! |
| You have a different plugin hogging CPU, such as logd, or an admin mod plugin. |
If you noticed the lag only after installing a certain plugin, this might be the case. |
Try removing the plugin to see if your lag improves. If it does, consider not running the plugin or finding a
replacement that uses less CPU power. For instance, many of logd's plugins are also available as StatsMe plugins. |
| You are running a highly CPU-intensive map. |
If you are playing cs_assault, de_torn, or another very intensive map, this might apply to you. |
Consider removing the map from your mapcycle or contacting us about whether the machine is having difficulty
handling your map. |
| You are running custom maps, and people are downloading them from the server. |
If you are running custom maps or have a lot of custom sounds/graphics, and are experiencing higher than normal lag and/or ping spikes, you may have this problem. |
Consider removing the maps from your mapcycle or disallowing them from being downloaded from the server by setting sv_allowupload 1 and sv_allowdownload 1 in your server.cfg file. |
| Your client-side variables need tweaking. |
If you see a lot of choke, or if you notice that when a new player joins the server your ping goes up, you need to tweak your client variables. |
Read the section later in the FAQ on tweaking your client settings. You will most likely need to raise your rate and possibly raise or lower your cl_updaterate and cl_cmdrate. |
| The machine that hosts your server is temporarily overloaded (for instance, someone else's server on your
machine might have crashed and is using all available resources). |
If none of the above reasons apply, this might be the case. Check the CPU information in the control panel under
"Health". If it is higher than 20% (on a non-accelerated machine) or 85% (on an accelerated machine), it is possible that your machine is having CPU usage problems. |
E-mail us regarding the problem. We usually detect and fix such problems on our own, but if you bring it to
our attention we can fix it for you immediately by moving your server to a new machine. |
| Your server is running out of bandwidth. |
This one's highly unlikely. With 100mbps of dedicated bandwidth at each location and only a small portion of that
in use, we have never come close to saturating our outgoing bandwidth. However, rarely we do experience DoS (Denial
of Service) attacks in which someone fills our entire 100mbps incoming pipe, blocking legitimate traffic.
If most of the servers on the servers page are down or lagging very badly, this may be the case. |
DoS attacks are very easy to detect, and we learn about them quickly. You will likely find an Event in your control panel very soon if you are being attacked. Usually DoS attacks go on for relatively short periods of time -- normally less than an hour. |
Q: I'm getting a lot of choke. How do I reduce it?
A: Choke occurs when your client can't maintain the necessary data rate to or from the server. This can occur
if your connection can't handle the rate, if the rate is too low, or if cl_updaterate or cl_cmdrate is set too high.
See the question on optimization for more information on how to tweak your rates.
Q: My server takes forever to change maps! What's going on?
A: There are a few possibilities here. First, your statsme log may have gotten too large, and it takes the statsme plugin a very long time to load it; I recommend you try shutting down your server, then deleting addons/statsme/statsme.log. Second, you may have other admin mod or metamod plugins that cause the mapchanges to be slow (the AMX plugin "csstats" is well-known to cause this, for instance); try disabling plugins to see if that will help. Third, your map files may have lost the hardlink to their source files on the server; you can ask us to run our repair script in this case.
Q: How can I optimize my client settings (cvars) so gameplay is as smooth as possible?
A: There are three main settings to look at on the client-side. These are rate, cl_updaterate,
and cl_cmdrate.
rate determines the speed, in bytes per second, that your client allows itself and the
server to interact at. This setting is needed because your client has no idea how fast your connection is, and it doesn't
know how to find out. The rate setting tells it the maximum speed at which it can transfer data. If it is set too
high, your connection may not be able to handle it, and you will get packetloss; if it is set too low, choke and latency will
increase, possibly making your game stutter or lag. Half-life is generally able to compensate for choke fairly well, as long as
there is not much of it; however, when choke gets too high (over 100), it has to start dropping packets (and we all know how bad
packetloss is!). I recommend a rate of 8000 or 10000, since most broadband connections can easily handle it (try 10000 first).
cl_updaterate determines how many updates per second the client will accept when it is interacting with the
server. A higher value can make gameplay more smooth, although it often makes your ping appear higher due to the added
latencies on both ends from extra calculations involved. I recommend a cl_updaterate of 40,
which I have found balances ping and smoothness fairly well. Feel free to try higher and lower values. A value too
high can cause choke if your machine or your connection can't handle all the packets; a high value can also make your ping look much higher than it should be. Some people blindly set this variable to 101 -- that would be an example of a too-high value.
cl_cmdrate determines how many commands your client sends to the server per second (such as moving, turning, jumping). I usually recommend that users set their cl_cmdrate cvar to the same value as cl_updaterate, because they are so similar. Too-high or too-low values (like 101) may lead to the infamous "shots not registering" problem and high values can also cause high in-game pings.
Q: A ping booster would make things better, right? That's like free performance! Can I add one on?
A: No. A "ping booster" such as Hullu's "WinHL-Booster" will change timers on the system and raise the server FPS, which can reduce your perceived ping, but at the same time it also causes much higher CPU usage. The higher CPU usage leads to lag spikes, long map changes, and other odd server behavior. It also affects all the servers on the machine. For these reasons, we cannot let you run one.
We do offer an option similar to a "ping booster" that we call a Ping Accelerator. If you order a server with this option, we will put you on a special machine that is designed with that use in mind and which we watch very carefully. The Ping Accelerator can reduce everyone's pings in the server by about 10 over a non-accelerated server.
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