For the last few days now I have encountered station lag where sometimes I cant chat in sector chat and have problems docking. I have also noticed when I am docked that the NPC convoys have erratic movements then zoom into the station to dock.

This does not happen in any none station sector and the stations I have encountered this problem is mainly grey space.

I'd recommend reading this sticky post for starters, and then perhaps including what station sector where you experience the issues, and exactly what time (and your timezone)? Thanks much.

ok my ping is fine and this is happening in every station i go in and to be precise 18:35 GMT im in Odia H-6, it took me 5 seconds of bouncing around in the docking bay.

also the nav waypoint is taking approx 10-20 seconds to show when you leave the station

When you say your ping is "fine", what is it exactly?

its sits around 115 to 125 +/- 2ms

I just logged into every station in Odia, and no problems docking instantly. I guess, go ahead and keep logging specific locations and times where you're seeing problems?

But, it's also possible that you're experiencing a localized network issue, somewhere between the server and you, that is causing intermittent packet loss. So, when you do a "/ping" it's recovered by then, but there may still be moments when lag pops up. This can be difficult to diagnose.

I don't see any evidence of problems or load on the server. Our entire back end cluster is running around 0.06% capacity.

ok thanks ill monitor it and report back

If you are using the new gl4 driver try reducing the dynamic light sources. My gtx560 ran great with the old driver but choked on pvp and docking until I reduced light sources from 20 to 10.

Your problem sounds similar to what I experienced.

Ive tried a few different drivers and light settings and im still getting the same problems. At the minute im at Latos N-15 GMT 18:20 and its real bad. My ping is normal 125 +/- 2.2ms and its taking me 5 to 10 seconds for my messages to pop onto the screen both sector and guild.

I have noticed this problem since the last update of adding warthogs to the strike force and the problem gets worse when NPC voys come into the sector.

Its getting worse its +1 minute for sector chat to show, and I bounced around in the dock for 10 minutes until it let me in. Also launching from the station is taking 5 to 10 seconds.

I've also noticed when i jump out of the sector I don't get the wormhole sequence i just get the ship flying past me

It turns out that it appears to be caused by a plugin spamming the game server with lots of requests for character info, which causes your network queue to get filled up, delaying any new packets that need to be sent to you.

It turns out that it appears to be caused by a plugin spamming the game server with lots of requests for character info, which causes your network queue to get filled up, delaying any new packets that need to be sent to you.
*cough*tgftplugins*cough*

Without creating another witch hunt, can we confirm which plugin actually caused the problem so others can avoid it until the author can build in some rate limiting?

We aren't completely sure. It may be related to BountyHUD? That was what stood out in Ray's testing. Convoys were flying in, and the plugin was requesting character information on all of them? But, it may also be how it interacts with other plugins that are currently loaded, and what they happen to be doing. Smudger was basically sitting at his server-side rate-limit constantly.. even when there were no characters in the sector with him, but he may have been so "behind" on queued packets that it just appears continuous to us.

Don't go on a melodramatic witchhunt, people. This is likely just some plugin bugs.

We're probably going to start rate limiting the entire plugin system (functions that query server data), to prevent this in the future.

Currently BountyHUD runs GetCharacterDescription() whenever it sees the TARGET_CHANGED event, unless the user has disabled displaying the target's bounty. On its own, that would be fine. If it's used in conjunction with other plugins that rapidly and frequently cycle through targets, that could cause problems. (For example, Cargo List and Targetless's ore list both do that; Targetless's ship lists are fine though.)

I don't know if smudger483 is actually using BountyHUD, but this is a bad possibility regardless so I'll fix it tomorrow.

Yeah, we were concerned about BountyHUD with Targetless, but we hadn't determined exactly what interaction was causing the issue. And yes, he was actually using BountyHUD.

Alright, BountyHUD 1.4 is now available and adds rate-limiting. Currently it's set to a maximum of twice per second, and it also now filters out things that aren't players (like asteroids, cargo, and NPCs) before it gets to the point where it tries to run GetCharacterDescription on them. Hopefully that should fix it.

Thanks. Yes he was using BountyHUD.