I posted this in the networking area, but feel I might find some good help here also.

I am in a gaming community that hosts tournaments with 64 player maps playing Battlefield 2 on a custom mod. www.21stcenturywarfare.com

Lately, we have had issues with lag and we have been trouble-shooting what might cause it.

Some speculation as to the causes are
Terrain issues with actual custom maps
Server OS (linux vs windows)
Server Location (Virginia)

The server box itself is top of the line. What my question is here is about location. We have good ping ratings and top end machines experiencing rubber-banding and warping that has nothing to do with the client side.

As for the server location...anyone here an expert to know whether or not the location of Virginia poses a problem for us hosting a server like this that includes people from all over the world? I get the above issues here in GA, with an avg ping of 26. The issues are server-wide, despite good quality ping ratings across the entire player-base.

Any helps appreciated.

first off the location could be a determinig factor for sure.. i do some of my web hosting and i a certified webmaster for about 1500 sites right now.. i have one paticular system in nashville an as400 brand new sucker that does the same.. so location is key for sure other than that i would most likely look at what the players are doing while playing the game are the doing any kind of malicious activity like trying hack the server while alot of the ports are open or are you getting some script kiddies in there trying to bring the server down.. there are way to way to many possibilites to even suggest where to start first and it is obvious that you are not a nub or even an intermediate gamer from the way you are talking.. advanced is the way i see your understanding so your guess would be as good as mine man

I only know just enough to be dangerous really. We have a whole tech/mod team that manage the servers. We typically wage a 12 hour war on one map. Right now, the biggest guess is that issues from the maps are causing the lag, but without success troubleshooting those and testing different types of maps, the server location and OS have come in to play.

I wouldn't imagine that we have any hacks going on of any sort, or the people of the higher-ups would id and ban those...and we'd at least know of the attempts although not finding all of them.

I can't rule those things out myself. But it seems to me, on my own guess, is that we experience slight packet loss and/or a bottlenecked bandwidth with the server and that's what creates the lag and rubber banding.

We operate TeamSpeak also off one of these servers, and even with a good connection and no servers in use, players will show <3% packetloss. There are times when we have no lag, and times when the lag is extreme. Which in my opinion, it deals more with the quality of the connection between clients and the server than any single client or server issue alone.

Even with good ping, rubber-banding and warping is caused by two things:
1) High packet loss
2) Client issues

What makes you feel there are no client issues? BF2 is riddled with the need for very, very serious hardware plus lots of hardware tuning to get a smooth online hosting experience.

As far as ping/packet loss goes, you can only test this with the help of those experiencing the problem. You'll need to do larger packet pings or use some net tools to measure packet loss. Keep in mind though, packet loss IN GAME can also be attributed to client issues.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I've hosted a number of world-wide #1 rated servers in the past and spent countless weeks with providers and hardware/kernel tuning in order to get insanely smooth gameplay. I've only dabbled shortly in BF2 as it's a real @!@@#$ to get running smoothly, but it's almost all client issues as the culprit.

Cheers