Masterserver fallback ( ideas? )

[titi]

Today the Masterserver was down and caused some strange behaviours in MG.
Anyone has an idea how to handle a fallback masterserver in case the original one is unreachable?

[will]

Introducing redundant servers e.g. dns load balancing means communicating between the master-servers.

It is perhaps easier to put the logic into the client instead; if the client supported multiple masterservers at once, and logged into all of them, and broadcast games to all of them etc, and merged duplicate results it gets from all of them and so on, you can have redundancy that way without needing masterservers to know about each other.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Lan play and IP connecting should allways be availlible, advanced features like master servers ect should not have a effect on games where ports and IP's are correct

[softcoder]

Will's idea is exactly how many similar scenarios work and is likely to yield the best results for the resources we have.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Softcoder, notice that will's and mine suggestions are slightly different in nature.

I'm just requesting that direct connection always should be available, Master server or not.

Will is suggesting what MG should do in case one master server fails.

[tomreyn]

I guess using DHT instead of a central masterserver could be an option.

[will]

DHTs are an interesting subject but they don't offer redundancy

[tomreyn]

DHTs are an interesting subject but they don't offer redundancy

Wikipedia mentions that redundancy can be achieved with DHT, too. But I agree with you, DHT is not a solution to the lack of redundancy.

What we should do for now is to ensure that there are no or as few as possible "strange behaviours" (quoting Titi) - which we will need to describe more closely to be able to fix them - when the masterserver is unavailable, since this will happen again in the future both in terms of planned and unplanned outages. We could have a high availability setup if we end up growing (much) more but this is not something we can currently afford.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Let's forcus on what we habe right now, just make it so that megaglest isn't depending on a masterserver, so if the master server is down the game will simply state "cannot connect to master server,is the server down?".

[titi]

Very good point!

[tomreyn]

So what needs to be changed for this to be this case? As with all issues, first of all we will need a precise description of the problem(s), if any.

I know that if the masterserver is not available the game will display a message stating something along the lines of "no masterserver is configured / defined" which is somewhat misleading. Are there any other problems?