Wild assumptions. ;-) There seem to be two of them (just like the two
servers under Germany marked "Valve"), Valve is in nearly full control
of them (so they won't be named "CS-Arena"), the one with the lower IP
address is down (fully grey area next to the lower number)... of course
there is room for errors, but I think this sounds logical enough to be
true... unless Valve is totally making fun of us. :-)
~~ Ondra
Timo Hilbertz wrote:
i fully agree! but: how do you conclude that #70 and #71 belong to the
IP(s) you mentioned?
Ondřej Hošek schrieb:
(Valve: 83.142.82.2 is down. Please bring back up.)
I think I'm starting to understand this whole thing of property and
fees... I hope. You're right... "filtered" is for groups of customers.
I've exchanged a few e-mails with an admin of CS-Arena before the
holidays and he said the following about their and Valve's
responsibilities about these servers (quote): "wir sind lediglich
Hoster, nicht Betreiber der Server. Daher ist Valve Software der
richtige Ansprechpartner." and "die Server stehen bei uns im
Rechenzentrum, mehr nicht ;) Was Valve darauf macht, ist deren Sache
;) ".
I therefore think that these two servers are -- even if they're stading
in the halls of CS-Arena, so every WHOIS at ripe.net will give you
"CS-Arena" as the company to contact -- the ones listed as "Valve #70"
and "Valve #71" under "Germany". Look at it this way: .2 has a lower IP
address than .7. #70 is lower than #71. .2 is down and the field next to
#70 is fully grey. This is called circumstantial evidence. :-)
So Valve does pay CS-Arena to host (unfiltered) content servers... and
"#70" (83.142.82.2) is down. When Valve sends 83.142.82.2 up and running
again, my problem is solved... and you can at least download your
update, even if your server isn't being used. (I suggest continuing to
bug Valve for results.)
CS-Arena themselves host a few servers for their customers, but that
doesn't interest us. They are filtered, and they should be.
Exec summary:
1. Valve contracted CS-Arena to host two content servers in Germany.
These servers are 83.142.82.2 and 83.142.82.7.
2. CS-Arena set up a few filtered content servers for their own
customers. They are not interesting to us.
3. 83.142.82.2 shrivels and dies. (83.142.82.7 was also down for a short
while, but is up again.)
4. Timo tries to get his update from his own (filtered) server, but for
some reason, he is sent to 83.142.82.2, which is down.
Problems:
1. 83.142.82.2 is down, which is bad for anybody who is sent there.
2. Timo gets sent to a different server than his own even though he has
his preferred content server IDs set.
I hope I've got this right and that it cleared things up. If not, just
ask about the shady parts and I'll try to formulate it in a more
comprehensible way.
~~ Ondra
Timo Hilbertz wrote:
Valve doesnt pay anyone for hosting Steam Content Servers.
You can join the Steam Content Service Program, but bring your own
hardware:
Dual Opteron or similar, ~160 GB HD with RAID, 8 GB RAM (dunno why so
much RAM).
(ask alfred, he can send you the application)
So do we, and our "filtered" server is dedicated to update our
gameservers, neither foreign gameservers, nor customer's game clients.
Ondřej Hošek schrieb:
"Filtered" probably means that only some Steam customers are
allowed to
download from these servers in order to reduce bandwidth. For example,
the CS-Arena.com servers might be configured to only allow certain
addresses from, say, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and
maybe a few others. The French servers may only be accessed by
addresses
belonging to France and BeNeLux. (This is all just speculation; the
filtering may be arbitrary. In any case, it's not only CS-Arena Valve
game servers which get their updates from the CS-Arena content
servers.
That wouldn't pay off for the cost Valve gives to CS-Arena for
hosting.)
As for my PreferredContentServerIDs: I have none. My downloads have
been
happy-go-lucky until now and I was pretty well off.
~~ Ondra
Timo Hilbertz wrote:
hi Ondřej,
thanks for your reply. its good to read that we are not the only one
with this problem.
according to the steam content server list all cs-arena.com servers
are
"filtered", so they should block all incoming requests that do not
belong to the cs-arena.com network.
this leads me to the question: why are update requests directed to
cs-arena servers at all? why are those servers listed as "filtered"
(http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=content_stats) when
foreign steam update clients are still directed to them? does that
make
sense to anyone?
Ondřej, what are your PreferredContentServerIDs ?
kind regards,
timo
Ondřej Hošek schrieb:
83.142.82.2, eh?
I'm in Austria, so this is a server I get sent to quite often.
Recently,
I had problems with 83.142.82.2 and .7. I've filed a support ticket
about them and once it was answered, .7 was up and running again
(ping
and stuff too) but .2 was still ignoring me completely (be it a
SYN to
TCP port 27030 or an ICMP echo [= ping]) and it still is doing so
now.
This leads us to two possibilities:
1. 83.142.82.2 is doing filtering of both TCP and ICMP echoes (which
means that if you're not on the "allowed" list, you won't get
answers to
ping... which is bad. I doubt you can pull of a DoS using ping and
network diagnosis possibilities are a Good Thing™). In that case,
the
filtering is done wrong, since I get elected for .2 and the server
doesn't let me in.
2. 83.142.82.2 is simply down. In this case, I'd beg the person
responsible for content servers to try diagnosing the problem or
calling
CS-Arena to give the box a cold start.
Anyway, good that this is getting some mailing list coverage. I find
the
support site kind of... too impersonal.
~~ Ondra
P.S. Drop me a line if I should try pinging or connecting to .2 for
diagnostic purposes.
Timo Hilbertz wrote:
hi valve,
again, our steam content server is not correctly handled by the SCS
network.
when i set up a fresh steam game servers and use
"PreferredContentServerIDs = 10,10,10" in the Steam.cfg file, the
steam
update is requested from 83-142-82-2.cs-arena.com which is a
filtered
server so this request will end in a timeout:
./steam -command update -game "Counter-Strike Source" -dir .
Checking bootstrapper version ...
Getting version 18 of Steam HLDS Update Tool
No Steam Content Servers available, please try again later
We already had this problem in September and now history repeats
itself.
I'm really sick and tired of requesting support for our content
server
that basically reduces the bandwidth load on your network and i
wonder
why a company like valve seems to be unable to fix such a simple
problem. As a matter of fact, we are currently unable to update our
steam servers as all requests run into pseudo-firewalled content
servers
from cs-arena (basically, request are not blocked as they should,
the
are kept in SYN SENT state and wait until their own timeout limit
terminates them).
To Do for Valve (especially Mike Dunkle):
1. tell cs-arena.com to properly block their content servers
2. check content server id #10 if this is set to 80.190.65.199,
80.190.65.200 or 80.190.65.201 (we accept connections on all three
IPs).
Hopefully, this is the end of a never ending story. If not, we will
shut
down the steam content server, it makes no sense to run a dual
opteron
with 8 GB RAM that simply does nothing.
regards
timo
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