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curious telnet issue

curious telnet issue

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Posted by

Babolas2 (4 posts)

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Date

Tue 09 Dec 2003 08:11 PM (UTC)

Message

I am experiencing some funny things when connecting to ShadowDale (sdmud.org:7777).

If I connect with MUSHclient, there is an absolute terrible lag when I submit commands..sometimes several minutes.

If I connect using putty.exe there is no lag!

If I connect using the telnet client in Internet Explorer or Netscape I get the same lag.

This only happens for this mud.

Also, this only happens when I connect from work (.edu). At first I thought the network here had throttled the 7777 port.

But why do I not experience the problem with putty.exe then?

It probably is an issue with the network, but just wanted to make sure it doesn't have anything to do with the telnet protocol MUSHclient uses.

I have tried from different machines and the problem is completely reproducible - lag using MUSHclient, no lag using putty.exe

Thanks,

Babolas

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts)

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Date

Reply #1 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 08:30 PM (UTC)

Message

What exactly is putty.exe?

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Babolas2 (4 posts)

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Date

Reply #2 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 09:05 PM (UTC)

Message

oh, I am sorry.

putty.exe is a telnet and ssh client for windows. you can check it out here:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Babolas

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts)

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Date

Reply #3 on Tue 09 Dec 2003 09:31 PM (UTC)

Message

Are you using SSH tunneling by any chance with putty?

Some sites (like .edu sites) will block/slow down traffic on non-standard ports. However, they leave the normal ports open just fine.

What may be happening is that putty is connecting through the SSH port using a technique called tunneling, where it connects through SSH to the host machine that then connects to itself on the MUD port. The original idea I believe was to be able to connect securely (via SSH) to a machine's text-only (i.e. telnet-type) port. The side effect is that you can get around bandwidth restrictions by having it think you're running SSH communications, when you're really just using that as a tunnel to get to your MUD.

Anyways my suspicion is that something like that may be going on, given that MUSHclient, telnet and IE all have lag, but the SSH client doesn't.

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #4 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 02:31 AM (UTC)

Message

I have just tried connecting to this MUD using MUSHclient 3.42, and have not experienced any lag. It would seem therefore that the problem is not with MUSHclient as such.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

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Posted by

Nick Cash USA (626 posts)

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Date

Reply #5 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 05:52 AM (UTC)

Message

I think why putty (I use putty too) may not be experiencing lag might be because its from some place else. When you are using putty, where is the server your logging into? In my case, I'm in Iowa and the server is in Washington. Your location may perhaps be the entire reason, though I do believe that it might be because of extra security precations from the school or w/e, but it might be that the server your connecting to with putty is either closer, has a faster connection, or more direct route to where ever your telneting to.

Anyways, if thats complete babble and is totally false, please correct me, thats how I understand it, but I'm just a newbie. :P

~Nick Cash
http://www.nick-cash.com

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Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #6 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 10:08 AM (UTC)

Message

Your explanation makes some sense, however I would expect location to affect each application equally.

If I could reproduce the problem I was going to see if there were special telnet codes that the MUD sent that MUSHclient wasn't replying to, however I found no lag, even after creating a character and wandering around a bit.

All I can suggest is trying MUSHclient, and putty simultaneously, to see if the lag is actually coming and going. Also make sure you have the latest MUSHclient version. I don't suppose you have some fancy triggers set up? Certain triggers can make MUSHclient slow, particularly something like this:

Match: **** Welcome ****

The multiple consecutive wildcards (which don't make sense to use) can cause the trigger evaluation to be slow.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

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Posted by

Babolas2 (4 posts)

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Date

Reply #7 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 06:24 PM (UTC)

Message

Thanks for all the suggestions.

It's pretty clear to me the problem is related to the particular network I'm on. I posted the issue here anyway, because other telnet clients (like putty.exe) somehow worked around the network issue.

Just to make it clear. If I run MUSHclient and putty.exe from the same machine simultaneously, I only experience the heavy lag using MUSHclient. And I'm not talking about a little bit of latency lag. It takes sometimes minutes to execute a command on the mud.

I'm using latest version of MUSHclient and have no weird triggers set up.

Anyway, I know some ports on the network have been throttled down to discourage P2P filesharing. However, I can still connect without lag to other muds that do not use the 7777 port. So perhaps port 7777 is just part of a port-range that has been throttled.

The reason why putty.exe do not get throttled then is perhaps because of SSH tunneling? It sounds completely plausible to me and putty.exe does in fact use SSH tunneling.

If this issue is affecting other users as well, perhaps SSH tunneling could be implemented in MUSHclient? Or does that open up a whole new can of worms?

Thanks,

Babolas

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts)

bio

Date

Reply #8 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 06:51 PM (UTC)

Message

It might interest you but I had *exactly* the same problem connecting to port 5432 on my MUD. I would get latency of up to *eight* minutes before commands made it from me to the MUD - strangely enough, commands from the MUD made it to me almost instantly.

What I ended up doing is contacting the sysadmin of Stanford's network and asking what was going on, and it turned out that they are indeed slowing down all non-standard traffic on the basis that most of it is misused for P2P and games and can really slow down the normal network.

I just made the case to them that my little MUD connection uses up at most a few k a minute, which is nothing compared to the multi-megabytes of graphics games; and besides, the MUD is a "practice zone for my programming skills" . . . :)

In any case, they set my computer to higher priority on that port and now everything works perfectly. And in fact I mentioned SSH tunneling because that is what I was going to use to get around this restriction, which I think is a little silly given how little traffic I generate.

The problem with implementing SSH tunneling on MUSHclient is that it doesn't work on all servers; there has to be an SSH server listening that supports tunneling, and it might be hard to explain that to people who aren't sure what SSH is. They might try using it, and then not have their connections work and wonder why. It also somewhat increases the load on the servers, I believe, which isn't very nice unless you really need it.

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Babolas2 (4 posts)

bio

Date

Reply #9 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 06:55 PM (UTC)

Message

"I would get latency of up to *eight* minutes before commands made it from me to the MUD - strangely enough, commands from the MUD made it to me almost instantly."

This is what I'm experiencinh too...

I did think about contacting the admins here, but thought I'd look at stting up an SSH tunnel first. I found some links explaining how I can set up an SSH tunnel using putty. I guess what's happening then is MUSHclient would actually talk to the mud through putty.exe. No idea whether it will work.

Since putty.exe can connects without lag, I'm guessing the mud does support it?

Babolas

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Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #10 on Wed 10 Dec 2003 08:38 PM (UTC)

Message

I doubt that you would accidentally tunnel SSH with puTTY without realising it, because you would need to tell it to do it, and also use a different port, I would have thought.

Anyway, all this has been covered. For a length discussion about SSH see this post:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?bbsubject_id=1439

For how to tunnel SSL with MUSHclient see this page:

http://www.gammon.com.au/mushclient/stunnel.htm

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

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