Unreliable NetGamers
 

Any chance of evaluating the partnership with NetGamers? I'm starting to get fed up of this network.

Fairly regular problems with P. The last downtime for P and the NetGamers website lasted about 5 days in total, leaving people unable to login. Luckily the last time wasn't during a round, but there have been quite a few occasions where it has been. Can't they sort out backup plans as an alternative for when P goes down? A read only copy would be sufficient in the event of downtime.

Unreliable DNS. Hardly surprising given that all 3 DNS servers are hosted at the same ISP. NS1/NS3 are on the same network and are working for now, NS2 is currently dead and not answering requests. So if Secnet has problems then chances are nobody will be able to connect to NetGamers, even though it has multiple servers across the world.

Current problems with nickname registration. It's the start of a round and apparently CService are having problems sending out emails to confirm registration. This is not what you want at the start of a Planetarion round.

NetGamers gets exclusive usage from Planetarion as a partner, I currently don't feel they're worthy of this. It isn't a reliable network as it currently stands. There are over 2,000 users which rely on NetGamers, I don't expect a perfect service but I do expect something reasonably reliable.

Either NetGamers needs to improve or Planetarion should look for another partner network.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

So long as it's not quakenet I don't care who the game uses :up:

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

I hear Royal Mail are pretty reliable

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

With all these strikes and postage stamp increases, i dont think it would be a wise investment.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

the only thing the royal mail is good for is to combat the spread of anthrax by post.
By the time it arrives, it will have died.

Back on topic:
Netgamers isnt all that bad, Yes it occasionally has a problem but they are usually fixed quickly.

by the way, all three pa dns servers are on the same network, but you arent complaining about those
Domain servers in listed order:
SLAVE.PLANETARION.COM 195.149.21.26
DNS-3.PLANETARION.COM 195.149.21.23
DNS1.PLANETARION.COM 195.149.21.29

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

In pa's case though if the pa isp becomes inaccessible then everything is down - it hardly matters if we loose the dns at the same time.

In netgamer's case they have multiple servers around the world etc, so it would make more sense to take advanatge of that and have some redundancy.

I believe netgamers are working hard at adding redundancy into their network at the moment, however as always we are monitoring the performance of our partners and if we believe it is needed we are willing to make changes,

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

the obvious choice would be to install a secondary dns on london - from pa's perspective anyway.
iirc that server is also on jolts network so it is likely to still be available if pa is.
There was also a temporary measure which lunar I believe bolted in to make irc.planetarion.com point to london.uk.eu.netgamers.org, Not sure if its still there but thats a nice backup i guess for irc in emergencies

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

Word on the street is that the 5 day downtime we had a while back was for maintenance purposes, and I bet the fact it was done in between two rounds was not a coincidence.

As for other downtimes, I'll just repeat what others have already said: there aren't that many issues, and those that do arise are often fixed within the hour.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

I'm afraid Planetarion has a few nameserver problems of its own.



slave.planetarion.com is dead:


dns-3.planetarion.com is a lame server (it isn't acting as a slave server, it's serving from cache instead of giving an authoritative answer):


Both dns1.planetarion.com and dns-3.planetarion.com allow recursive queries (bit concerning for security):


You might want to get your admin to fix this.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

This is correct.
This is also correct, but additionally it was precisely because we'd been having problems with P's hosting that this maintenance was performed.

We are, as Kal said, presently working to ensure that the network runs more smoothly in future, with a view to allowing swifter solution of DNS issues and any potential future hosting problems with P (even though it seems happy where it was recently moved to.)

There have been a lot of behind the scenes changes going on with the network recently, and we're taking the opportunity to make the whole system a bit more flexible - so with any luck once we get over the current problems, things should be plain sailing for a good while.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

If you think today's Netgamers is bad, you should have been here 3-4-5+ years ago. Netgamers is fine.

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

(On a sidenote, some information before the 5 day P downtime occured would've been nice!)

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

We would ordinarily do this, but that time it was a period of 'unscheduled maintenance', shall we say :p

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

netgamers is as stable as amy whinehouse

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

Sometimes I think she's more stable Smudge :p

Re: Unreliable NetGamers
 

otherwise know as something went very wrong and we decided to fix it properly seeing as the round wasnt running

but seeing as the webby was down as well as P ... hosting/server issues ?