Struggling with map downloads

[Snype32]

Hello all, I'm new here, so forgive my ignorance on this. I am setting up ET on a few of my computers so my friends and I can have an old school LAN party. I have the game working fine, but I do have a couple issues. when I join online games, map downloads take forever, so I have downloaded them manually an put them in the ETMAIN folder. that works fine, but I'd rather not have to do that for all my machines, plus my friends ones too. I thought the maps would download to each computer over my lan, which they attempt to do, but at like 25k....takes forever. Is there a way to speed this up? I have seen people suggest some kind of redirect setup, but why cant the map files transfer over the LAN quickly?

 

Thanks for any help! This website looks like a great resource!

[Nancy]

Do you use cat 5e cable for old style lan party or? 

Try to change it. I remember some times its switches on slow 100 kbps mod then my cable was twisted by my chair...  

 

 

[Snype32]

no, its defiantly the game. network is working full speed for everything else. 

[RendeL]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

 

I have not setup lanparty, but sounds like the redirect issue, since you say game is working otherwise.

 

Have you tried to setup download rate here:

 

[razjee]

This should help:
seta cl_allowDownload "1"    
seta cl_wwwDownload "1"     
(Cant remember which one)
Just type this in the console or add it to the cfg and exec cfg. Then connect to online server, the missing files should download at normal speed.

[TomekKromek]

You might want to increase below cvars on your server (ETL/2.60b may differ):

 

sv_dl_maxRate 

sv_dlRate 

 

It is probably in bytes. May be limited to 100kbps. Setting it to 0 might disable limit. Not sure about all that but it is something that you can check.

 

[Vice86]

The machine that hosts, provides the maps via 100 kilobit downloadspeed.

if you need faster downloadspeeds, you will need a http redirect server. 

that's a fact.

 

Developers of the game limited that downloadspeed in the source code of the game, for a server to host and play at the same time, without influenceing the players that already play. 

 

if it's in the lan, you can install a mini http server like

https://www.aidex.de/software/webserver/

and use the hostingmachines IP address as the redirect access, and configure the ETmain folder of the Server Host, as the http filesource in your Http server configuration.

so far to the solution.

 

another workaround and more practical way for a LAN, is to simply share the ETMain folder in Windows, and everyone just uses copy pasta via the Network.

Edited January 16 by Vice86

[Vice86]

12 hours ago, RendeL said:

Hello and welcome to the forums.

 

I have not setup lanparty, but sounds like the redirect issue, since you say game is working otherwise.

 

Have you tried to setup download rate here:

 

if you limit it there, it can still just be limited between 0 and 100 Kilobits.

 

that made sense in some real slow or laggy networks, or when some shared their bandwidth, or your host was connected via an 56K modem or ISDN (128kbit) and you didn't want to blow the full bandwidth for map downloads.

Edited January 16 by Vice86

[Snype32]

thanks for the input everyone. Looks like I'll probably set up a network share. Thanks!