Bottiger

Administrator
We have been working very hard on our own network in the past few months which promises lower pings and increased DDoS protection.

For a professional explanation of what anycast is, you can read Cloudflare's article here: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/glossary/anycast-network/ If you already know what Cloudflare is, then you can think of it as Cloudflare for our TF2 servers instead of just websites.

If you are still confused, here is our explanation.

In a normal setup, attackers overwhelm a server's connection to the internet by crowding out legitimate users.

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By running our own network and placing filtering routers all over the world, we can block the attacks before they travel all the way to the server.

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Some hosts already block attacks like this but since they have thousands of customers, they only want to protect websites which are easier to do and don't want to spend the time to protect a niche like TF2.

This setup also has the possibility of lowering your ping like the "ping boosters" that are advertised online. By having our router close to your home, your ISP is more likely to have a better connection to the router a short distance away. This is basically like a free ping booster for all our servers.

Please try it out and let us know how it is. If you run into any issues like disconnections or high ping, let us know about it here. We will need the results of your traceroute. You can learn how to run traceroute here: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169336-How-do-I-run-a-traceroute-

Later on, we will open more servers (and maybe even other games) on this network as we get more confident that it is free of issues.

This setup is also very expensive (need to buy dozens of servers around the world) and we do not know if we can afford it in the long run. So if you are interested in being hosted on this network and helping us pay for it or even upgrade it to handle bigger DDoS attacks, you can pm me here.

Servers currently on the new network
  • 5.181.89.10 2Fort
  • 5.181.89.11 Payload
  • 5.181.89.12 Dustbowl
  • 5.181.89.13 Deathrun
  • 5.181.89.14 Saxton
  • 5.181.89.15 Zombie Escape
  • 5.181.89.16 Turbine
  • 5.181.89.17 Hightower
 
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Gamer4605

Banned
Will this affect users (like me) who prefer to use the us server despite being from other countries as it has more players?
 

Bottiger

Administrator
You may see better ping to our servers. Usually ISPs have poor international connectivity, and this would likely improve it.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
The 2fort server being tested on the new network was a success and has people playing on it around the clock.

We have now opened Payload on it and hope to see you there.

5.181.89.11:27015
 

DaivdBaekr

Moderator
Contributor
If anycast continues to be successful how far can this be scaled up? Or is having to change IPs for existing servers worth that risk?
 

Bottiger

Administrator
We can add as many servers as went.

Changing ips always seems to result in player loss. We've only been moving dead servers to this new network so far so there was no risk for us.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
The backend server on this new network is temporarily down to fix some issues with the host's main router. It will probably take around 5-10 minutes.