Servers - In what order are they checked?

[jimerb]

I have two servers at the moment that I'm hoping will do a better job at filling in missing sets.

Is there a way to specify the order in which they are checked? I don't see any "Up/down" options on the server panel and I'm wondering how that works?

Will it check on server 2 if it can't find stuff on server 1?

Thanks.

[Quade]

Position in the list doesn't matter. You set the server priority to control order of checking. The lower the priority, the earlier it's checked. So, your primary server might be order 1 and secondary server would be order 2 or higher.

It always checks all active servers but, it'll check the higher priority servers after the lower priority ones.

[jimerb]

Ahh! See it now. I missed the priority field. Thanks.

[rh]

It always checks all active servers but, it'll check the higher priority servers after the lower priority ones.

Wait, that's backwards, right Higher priority servers are checked first?

http://help.newsbin.com/index.php/V660-ServerOptions

[Quade]

You can think of the priority you set as "order". So, 1 is first, and 2 is second and so on.

[rh]

Duh, sorry, I was interpreting wrongly

So maybe a related question I just thought about. If I make them the same priory would that essentially split the load across the two while still ensuring the other would be checked in the case of a post absent on the other?

[tl]

So maybe a related question I just thought about. If I make them the same priory would that essentially split the load across the two while still ensuring the other would be checked in the case of a post absent on the other?

Yes, it will split the load among the servers with the same priority though how evenly that split will be depends on external factors like the speed of each server compared to how many connections it use to that server and you can to some extent affect the balance by changing number of connections for each server.

AFAIK it will try all servers at a highest priority (lowest number) before going to the next group of servers and will go through all available servers before giving up. If you have retries it'll do those before switching server which can add up if you let it do many retries and have multiple servers.

[Quade]

If you add a server it defaults to priority 1 so, yes the load will be spread over all priority 1 servers.

Retries are pretty much going away in the next beta. They seem kinda pointless in today's usenet. All active servers will get check and then the file will be assembled when the last chunk downloads or fails.

I haven't seen a modern server that really benefits from retries. I can think of one case, where post distribution is delayed on a server. I'm just not sure if that happens anymore.

If you have retries it'll do those before switching server which can add up if you let it do many retries and have multiple servers.

In 6.82, it'll check the other servers before retries kick in. 6.90B2 will toss bad servers, bad being "can't connect" into a bad server bucket so, it'll stop attempting to use those connections to the server. For example if you set 50 connections on a server that only supports 10, 40 of your connections will eventually get marked "bad" and it'll stop attempting to use them. This should prevent a dead server from stalling downloads.

B2 is on IRC. Dex and I are shooting to forum it this week.

[rh]

Thank you both. I had assumed 'evenly' was an estimate regarding the spread. I'd recalled reading about that in a post some time ago but could not find it.

I've only got 2 right now, both with 50 connections set and don't think I see many retries. Are those in the log?

The 2nd server has certainly fixed my article not found problems though! Splitting the workload just seems like a friendly thing to do