So I've tried to put up a server, but couldn't get much further than gray ocean. It shows up on the server list, and I can join my own server and walk around, but everyone else apparently just gets a gray world.

I'm not sure if it matters but yeah, I tried not playing in my own server, people still get gray worlds. I can usually see lots of clients joining and leaving.

I have forwarded both TCP and UDP 32887. Not sure if TCP is necessary.

Now here it gets weird: I can't check if 32887 is forwarded via canyouseeme.org. It tells me the connection times out.

I have other ports, both above and below 32887, both TCP and UDP, that I have forwarded for other purposes. canyouseeme.org correctly shows the forwarded TCP ports as open, and gives a time out error for UDP ports.

Apparently you can't check UDP with sites like these anyway, you need to communicate with the actual server. Though then again, if my server appears on the list, I guess the port is open?

By the way, if I forward just 32887 TCP, canyouseeme.org still doesn't say it's open. What the hell? I dunno lol.

This appears to be a major problem, since half the servers are empty right now and probably for this reason. Another quarter have some players, but you get a gray world, probably for the same reason.

So what's with the gray world thing? Is it a configuration problem? Is it because the server bandwidth (master or individual) is saturated? Is it because of latency/lag?

Also, whoever is running Vajina EU, what's your set up? Upstream bandwidth? RAM? Settings?

Not running Vajina but I'm running a different 32 player server here (down atm while I put on 0.22 and sort out auto-restart on crash).

It's a Linux VPS with 512MB of RAM and that seems to be plenty for 32 players (this server is also running nginx, php-fpm & mysql but they get nearly no load currently).

Bandwidth looks to be the kicker - with 32 players it looks like I'm pushing ~4 Mb/sec (0.5 MB/sec). If that remains constant then that's... about 1.3 terabyte transfer for 30 days?

Only ~130kBps - ~160 stable on a 32/32 server here. (you dont measure in Mb/s all the time do you...)
Of course, this transfer rate flies up on-connect when someone requests the map data.

you dont measure in Mb/s all the time do you...

No, I was just reading it off my Munin network monitoring graphs and that's in bits/sec. :)

I should add the caveat - the traffic level I was seeing was only from running the server for ~2 1/2 hrs. It could well average out lower over a longer period of time (I hope so, for the sake of my server's bandwith limits!).

Superbest: On port 32887 - Says connection Refused for me(canyouseeme.org), and I am hosting a working server. Look for firewalls/comodo/etc. This can prevent your server from working.

ComradeFlapjack: Consider switching ISPs, because I have no bandwidth limits, they are the devil.

Upload Bandwidth usage 32player server: http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/4127/bandwidth.png
Spikes should be when users connect.

Thanks guys, this explains a lot. Naka is that 30 KB/s average and 128 KB/s max? For 32 players?

If so we get roughly 1 KB/s max per player and 3-4 to handle spikes. I think my upload goes to about 15-20 tops, no wonder my server sucked.

I've figured out the port business, it was working fine when others were able to get as far as the gray sea. I got my friend to join and play normally, it's a bit weird since we share the same connection, but yeah. A bunch of people were able to join (and not get gray sea since they could pick teams) but their models would spawn and not move, then disappear after a while. Probably because they were leaving.

So in conclusion:
1. canyouseeme.org is useless for checking your configuration.
2. Each player sucks up about a KB/s upstream, but allow for spikes 4 times that.

No. That's download speed you're looking at. Like I said, uploading at ~130kBps - ~160 stable. Not 30. 30 Is downspeed. The graph shows upload speed.
If your upload is 15-20kBps tops, don't try hosting a 32 player server! My up speed is mBps tops.

So something like 5 kBps per player then? Dang, I can host like, a 2 player server.

;_;

Huh, in my case others can join my server but not me :)

Just as an update on bandwidth now things have been running a while - here's the last 24 hours on 'Flapjack UK Dedicated' which is 32 players.

Total combined bandwidth (up + down):
http://img146.imageshack.us/i/aosbandwidth.png/

Split (upstream above red line, downstream below red line):
http://img715.imageshack.us/i/aosbandwidth2.png/

(Up = server upstream so is player downstream, Down therefore obviously = player upstream)

32 players is a pretty constant ~3.2 megabit/sec (400 kilobyte/sec) here. I'm not sure why Naka sees lower bandwidth values than me...

So, for me, 32 players = ~34.6 GB/day or ~1.05 TB/month (will actually work out a bit more I expect due to those peaks).

ComradeFlapjack: That matches what I was getting when I started up AucklandNewZealand -- A pretty solid 3.5 megabits/sec outbound and about 1 megabit/second inbound traffic with 32 players online: http://lpdp.org/AucklandNewZealand.png - FYI that server is (now) limited to NZ/Au only, so the players dropped off overnight. Big dips in the middle of the day was caused by the server.exe binary crashing.

Your estimate of just over 1TB/month for a completely full 32/32 server sounds pretty much spot on from what I've seen.

i cant get my serve to show up on the website