With the recent news Wargamez going dead and the discussion about renting a server reminded me of this:

Why rent a server if we DON'T get full advantage of the resources we already have (qizmo)?? As everyone knows, its possible to get lower (or higher) pings when connection to a server thru a qizmo. but WHICH qizmo to choose?? Keep reading.

Here's a thing i would like very much to see implemented:
A little service (utility) to be put on servers with a qizmo port, which received a server ip as an argument. The utility then did a simple ping to that ip (from the server) and then returned the average value.

the interface with the utility could be added to a webpage. Some players (including myself) struggle to get the lowest possible ping to a given server. What i did in the past was joining my favourite qizmos and ping a couple of servers. I added the information colected to a .txt file and for the next week or so* i had an idea of the ping i would get if i connected to a certain qizmo and then to a certain server. **I hope im making myself clear.

<dream>
I go to qw.nu and theres a little space there with a textbox. I put my desired ktx server ip on that textbox and click "submit" button. A new page opens with a table containing a list of all qizmo servers, ip, hostname and country AND the results of the pings done by each of those servers to the ip i entered on the textbox.
Now i can open ASE or whatever and ping the qizmos from my pc. (in my case i already know which are the best qizmos for me, you prolly know it for yourself also) I quickly choose a handful of qizmos that are good for me. Then I "take" those qizmos and search for them on the list, and watch the results they had (ms to desired ip)

Voilà! Adding my ping time to XPTO qizmo and XPTO qizmo to my desired server, i know which qizmo to choose. As you know, sometimes the results are much better than connecting directly to the server. With this utility, you KNOW thats the BEST result you will get tonight.*
</dream>

Imho this would be very interesting to make. Would save us lots of time in our quest for lower pings. Comments?



* The routings vary from time to time (at least here)
** Nowadays i don't have the time or patience to gather such a list. do you? Thats what I thought.

Note: On a more "pro" approach, its possible to connect via 2 qizmos and then the desired server. I have done this in the past with good results.

We have had talks with Qqshka about adding routing ability to MVDSV itself (you could use it as a proxy). Qizmo is being outdated and buggy with noone to fix those bugs. This way we would have a lot of proxies around for better routing, yet lagging features qizmo offers. Routing part sounds good, lack of Qizmo features might scare some people though.

How is Qizmo buggy, may we know?

how about adding this stuff to ezquakes serverbrowser? or just a simple command line variable, (fastconnect servername).. since ezquake has a list of servers already so it wouldnt, or at least shouldnt, be too hard to calculate pings a bit.

It concerns server admins only, but:

1) qizmo crashes under load (especially when idiots are flooding).
2) qizmo will eventually end up not starting again because it fills message queue if it's scripted to restart (ipcs or reboot is required).
3) has few minor bugs that cause annoyance.

Hi, maby this is not the thread. But i have and idéa.
Manu told me and some other guys about some qizmo times through routings.
That it could be coded into somekinda program that checks routings to each servers through diffrent qizmos.
Automaticly it chooses the best qizmo for best routing and pings to the server you want to play on.
Maybe thats what you tried to explain above mushi?

Some coder or something, try pull this through.

exactly phren. the only diference between what u said and what i said, is that u mention some program to do it automatically. I proposed something simpler, just give an ip for the servers with qizmo to ping and return the results.

I would do it, im a amateur programmer in .net. just tell me how

How do you ping a server from a qizmo if it's not added to the server browser?

I don't have qw here but its in the qizmo menu, servers, "enter ip" or something. that gives u the ping from the qizmo server to the ip u type.

Moved to server talk.

I would like to know more information about mvdsv with routing capabilities. sounds YAY!

to renzo/someone:
what are the requirements/effort needed to do such a thing?

if this goes forward, we can say goodbye to the outdated qizmo. this and eztv would kill qizmo for good. one more milestone for qw!

Well one incredibly easy thing to do would be the following:

-First, setup a up to date qw master server (hosted by quakeservers.net) which can be easily updated via text file.
-Next step is to repackage qizmo and modify the sources list to point to this master server.

This makes it much easier for people to test routing from different qizmos. All they have to do is connect, update and ping the source. No need to manually type in a whole list of different ips.

Obviously this isn't an ideal solution because it still requires a bit of testing from the user. But it would be really easy to setup and very helpful to a lot of people.

edit: I also like the idea of adding proxy routing capability to MVDSV, providing it doesn't impact performance too much.

I believe that its the servers that must point to a masterserver, and not the oposite.

About repackaging qizmo: Some admin work is required (bad) plus u still had to connect to diferent qizmos to check pings (in this case, to all servers).

What i was saying is the oposite: "force" a bunch qizmo servers to ping a certain ip and return the results.
imo this would be a better option in the case i want to find out the best routing to a specific server.

Don't u think?

That was the case with the original master servers for Quake, but 5-6 years ago I came across a custom qw-master server which does not require servers to report to it - you can simply supply a text file listing all the IPs. It's called "qw-master.exe", I still have a copy in my quake dir if would be any use. I'd imagine there are versions for non-win32 platforms or sourcecode available somewhere too.

Yes, repackaging qizmo requires admin work (copying over a new sources.txt.....), but this isn't even remotely close to the amount of work and trust needed for an admin to setup "A little service (utility) to be put on servers with a qizmo port, which received a server ip as an argument. The utility then did a simple ping to that ip (from the server) and then returned the average value. ". I'd imagine some admins would be a bit reluctant to install remote pingers on their servers linked into a web interface, compared to simply copying over a single .txt file.

As for having to connect to different qizmos to check pings, this would only be the case if the server you wanted to play on doesn't have a qizmo of it's own. This is because if the server concerned has a qizmo, literally all you would have to do is connect to that qizmo, ping all the other qizmos in europe (which it gets from our lovely qw-master) and then pick ones with low latency that you yourself ping well to.

There is already a master which has all the servers that are in QuakeServers.net. It is coded and run by Bigfoot at asgaard.morphos-team.net:27000. The master downloads a .txt file from http://www.quakeservers.net/quakeworld/server_lists/ . There is also a list of currently working masters at http://www.quakeservers.net/quakeworld/master_servers/ .

^Cool.
This means that for my suggestion literally all that needs to be done is to modify the sources.txt used by Qizmo, remove all the dead masters and add the line:
master "Asgaard" 85.10.201.75:27000 2

Obviously this wouldn't be an ideal solution (a seperate master just for qizmo servers would be cool) and there may be a few qizmos where non-admin access to update sources is disabled (it isn't by default, fortunately), but it would be a good start.

You could make a Qizmo filter for hostnames which begins with "Qizmo", I believe all Qizmos have this?

Only if the hostname is set that way (check chosen for example).

Simply adding a master to a qizmo would be a primitive solution for the problem imo
this way, to find the best routing i still need to connect to several qizmos to find the best one -> time consuming, boring, so '80s

I agree that admins may be a bit relutant about installing a "ping utility" on servers. but this alternative isn't "good" either. Even more considering qizmo is approaching the end.

One ultimate solution for this is the mvdsv routing capabilities someone mentioned here. i ask again: what's the status on this? is it possible considering the current availability of coders?... who knows about this? reply!



ps:
qizmo's routing capabilities have always been underated imo. Few can use it with success.
With a good solution to use routing, "ping whine" (tm) can be considerably reduced.

qizmo doesn't suddenly shorten the distance between two countries, so stop telling us about how qizmo reduces the ping, yes, it sometimes helps, but it won't suddenly make Portugal lay next to Germany so you can get 26/39 ms so really, stop 'advertising' it so badly

Presuming that almost every server running MVDSV also runs some Qizmo (or vice-versa), it'd be enough to add some ping capability to MVDSV. This would allow you to get pings between all (qw) servers available.
Then you can put this data into some (web-based) utility which would find best route between point A and point B ping-wise (quite simple job if you give me the data). And by route I mean using even more then just one or two proxies on the way! This solution is very simple (only adding small and safe functionality to qw server + writing small app) and finds the best routing ping-wise.

im very interested in helping in any way i can Johnz.

When the ping capability can be added to mvdsv? how can I help? The web application would be very simple indeed.

But Qizmo can make you reroute to make ping better, ofcourse it doesn't work always or for everyone, but for .pt people to connect to Germany, Netherlands or Denmark it works or for vice versa, or for all the polish kurwa! So there is a part of the community who need it, if that's not you.. stay away and stop spoiling plxkthx

There is no qizmo witch works as good as Sassa qizmo to wargamez , from kurwa land if you use one of polish qizmos like kubus or aster the difrence is like 5ms high, avarage 3ms better .In theory dybuk qizmo located in germany could help a lot but ping is higher than without qizmo most importand is qizmo cams. That thing embembed in ez where you could choose to join ,spectate as player or watch as qtv client would help.And yea dynamic routing thru proxy to get best ping when you connect to server (as a option) is future and clever idea.

any news about this?
As i read in here:
http://www.quakeworld.nu/news/158/
, in #24 phantasy says he wrote a small app that pings ip from qizmos... I would like to know more...

Since phantasy himself doesn't seem interested in promoting his app I guess I'll do it instead ... Here's the app he's talking about:
http://hikari.campus.ltu.se/programming/qizmoping.tar.bz2

Might add something similar to ezquake, I'll put it on my todo at least

is it a linux only app? lets compile and c

do it! i want this bad

Here's my windows port of qizmoping.
It gives me an error though (receives quit message from the Qizmo for unknown reason).

qizmoping.exe qizmo.quake.se:27500 wargamez.dk:27501
qizmo pinger by phantasy
using ip qizmo.quake.se:27500
trying to connect...
connected !
remote quit


Edit: Murdoc had another way around i think, thrugh the serverbrowser i think..
Well, someone get this thing working! would help ALOT of people to get better ping