too much traffic issue

[SpiritOffice]

i have just compared the traffic of ts2 and ts3. here is two screenshots. both are made when only one user logged on (me). ts3 server has only one channel. i do not understand what it sends? there is nothing to do.

my ts2 server consumed 7,13 GB in 52 days ( 137 MB/day). and my ts3 server 1,7 GB in 4 days (425 MB/day). ts2 server uses Speex 16.3 Kbit codec and ts3 server uses Speex 16kHz on 7th quality = 5 KiB/s. on the ts3 server are less users as on the ts2 server, but it cunsumes much more traffic.

[10to7]

i have stumbled upon these figures a few days before but didn't pay any attention... but seeing your post on this topic i rechecked with most recent clients on linux and winxp. I can absolutly confirm the numbers you are seeing.

What really concerns me is has noone else seen this issue?
I would consider it a severe problem, as the idle traffic is magnetudes higher than on it was in ts2.

Maybe somebody (official) could shed some light on this: is it intentional or is it maybe due to debug information being sent.

server: linux 64bit 3.0.0-beta9 [Build: 9527]
client: windows 32bit 3.0.0-beta7 [Build: 9525]
client: linux 32bit 3.0.0-beta7 [Build: 9525]


best regards

[azzy101]

" too much traffic "

nonsense, thats 700 bytes. thats tiny! any modern broadband connection can handle this.

[Stefan1200]

Currently the TS3 codec needs more bandwidth because of the lower latency codec / speech transmission.

As far as I know its planned later in the beta to add a new codec. This has a higher latency (like TS2), but need less bandwidth.

[Birdie]

ts2 server uses Speex 16.3 Kbit codec and ts3 server uses Speex 16kHz on 7th quality = 5 KiB/s. on the ts3 server are less users as on the ts2 server, but it cunsumes much more traffic.

A shore hand calculation gives:
16.3 KiBit/s = 16.3/8 KiByte/s = 2.04 KiByte/s

So it is really no big surprise that a codec that roughly uses 2.5 times the bandwidth of a different one causes correspondingly more traffic. Additionally, there is only so much sound quality that you can achieve with a given bandwidth. If you can live with a lower sound quality, then just decrease the codec's quality level until its estimated bandwidth matches the TS2 codec's requirements. One of the biggest advantages of TS3 is really the increased sound quality which comes at the cost of higher traffic.

[SpiritOffice]

thank you all for the answers. now i undestand the problem.
but if i set the quality to the same bandwidth as ts2 then nobody can undestand each other in channel
i hope it will be better after release

[Stefan1200]

@ SpiritOffice: I use Speex 16 kHz on Quality 4. It sounds only a little bit better than TS2, but the bandwidth is ok (only DSL lines with 9 kb/s upload get problems while speaking and online gaming at the same time (depend on the game, of course).

[10to7]

@azzy101 that is 700bytes per second!!! which is definitly not "tiny". Do the math yourself what it means for a loaded server.

@Stefan1200 these measures are not codec, it is just keep alive and control traffic no voice is actually encoded, this is just idle traffic.

think about it, this _is_ significant.

[Stefan1200]

@Stefan1200 these measures are not codec, it is just keep alive and control traffic no voice is actually encoded, this is just idle traffic.

I know. But I mean the last post of SpiritOffice.

[10to7]

and still the question remains if this traffic is intentional or due to the beta state.
If the idle traffic stays at this level in the final version there is no way for me to deploy ts3 as a replacement for ts2. Personally (and from sw developers point of view who is unaware of any design decission that may have have influenced this) i would consider this design seriously flawed (even though i like the product itself a lot).

[10to7]

i looked into this high idle traffic issue a bit more found some interesting things: while the idle bandwidth usage of ts3 is higher than that of ts2 the actual difference is not as big as one might assume from looking at the screenshots from SpiritOffice's initial post.
While the numbers shown in the screenshots are correct, the actual idle traffic is not as high, in fact it is a bit less than 2 time the ts2 idle traffic.
What seems really strange to me though is, that the traffic increases to the amount shown as soon as the "Server Connection Info" or "Connection Info" windows are opened.
While being quite happy that the real idle bandwidth usage is a lot less than shown in the screenshots i am still curious why it increases that much when the connection information window is display.
Any ideas/suggestions someone?

best regards

[azzy101]

@azzy101 that is 700bytes per second!!! which is definitly not "tiny". Do the math yourself what it means for a loaded server.

@Stefan1200 these measures are not codec, it is just keep alive and control traffic no voice is actually encoded, this is just idle traffic.

think about it, this _is_ significant.

i know the math's and i know that:

1) The majority of rented servers are on 100 Megabit lines.
2) NPO servers are hosted on unlimited / Gigabit bandwith servers.
3) i have a 7 megabit line and 38kb upload speed, even i can handle 700 bytes

4) 700 bytes is:

bits 	5600
bytes 	700
kilobits 	5.46875
kilobytes 	0.68359375
megabits 	0.005340576171875
megabytes 	0.000667572021484375

... TINY! thats nothing at all man, i send more infomation during a text chat on MSN.

[10to7]

i know the math's and i know that:

1) The majority of rented servers are on 100 Megabit lines.
2) NPO servers are hosted on unlimited / Gigabit bandwith servers.
3) i have a 7 megabit line and 38kb upload speed, even i can handle 700 bytes

then consider yourself a lucky guy

[R. Ludwig]

please consider that with ts3 we also count int udp/tcp headers while we dont did that with ts2.

also you can be sure that we try all to minimize bandwidth usage in the upcoming weeks.

[10to7]

please consider that with ts3 we also count int udp/tcp headers while we dont did that with ts2.

that might explain some of what is displayed in the connection info window. But i also _meassured_ the displayed amount of traffic while (and only while) the connection info window was displayed.
As stated in another post above the actual "idle" traffic is not that much. According to my meassurements it is around twice that of the ts2 idle traffic (around 1.8 i would guess).

But nevertheless it is important to know that the values displayed cannot be directly compared to the values in ts2.

also you can be sure that we try all to minimize bandwidth usage in the upcoming weeks.

i am sure you will and i am also sure it's very much appreciated

best regards