TeamSync - In-Game VOIP in BF3 with TS - Support?

[Remi]

Does Multiplay TeamSpeak servers support/work with the TeamSync plugin?

TeamSync - Tactical VOIP for gamers

What is TeamSync?

TeamSync is a server-based application that implements BF3 squad-VOIP using TeamSpeak 3. It synchronizes players on the TeamSpeak server with squads in-game.

Installations guide:
TeamSync - Using TeamSpeak3

[K]

Don't see why it shouldn't work

[Remi]

Originally Posted by K

Don't see why it shouldn't work

It won't work cause TeamSync gets banned from TS3 query because they issue to many fast commands (10 commands in 3 seconds is the limit)
-> WE NEED TS3 WHITELISTING to avoid the thing to get banned for 500+ seconds each time.

[Remi]

No one at Multiplay that can comment on the query problem?

[Wizzo]

It's the weekend and it was our Xmas party last night, so I don't expect to see any of the office staff around for a while . This is definitely something we are aware of and have some ideas how to implement what you are trying to achieve. Will discuss more on Monday and see what we can come up with.

[Remi]

Nice, thank you very much!

[Remi]

Hey MP, any news from your meeting about this?

[Boomsling]

It wont work as they will not whitelist the IP or something nor can they give you the info you need to set it up which is:

serverquery_username

serverquery_password

Here is my correspondence with support:

Game: Battlefield 3
Mod: Battlefield 3 ( R10 )
Type: Addon
Description: Teamsync
Filename: uploads/98586/teamsync.zip
Instructions:
FAO : Cl0ne

Spoke to Chris McCall he said to get this uploaded and see if Cl0ne could sort somthing out for us

The zip file contains a small program that allows our BF3 server to sync with our TS3 server. It will create channels as required and put everyone in the server in the correct squad channel automatically.

I dont need you guys to host this as I could run it from my Windows Home Server box at home (if you can host it, thats awesome!) but what I do need is a couple bits of info for TS3, namely :

serverquery_username

serverquery_password

When I was speaking to Chris he says I cannot get that info on my own due to a security feature or something called ACL?

Hope you guys can get this sorted.

For reference the installation instructions are here:

TeamSync - Using TeamSpeak3

I have entered all the data into the servers.ini file apart from the two bits I mentioned above.

Thanks for looking

Regards


Boomsling

And their reply:

Hello,

I'm afraid this isn't something we can support at this time due to the way this application connects to Teamspeak, the rate of data connections is too much for a non-whitelisted address.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
--
Regards,

Dan 'Deehem' Miller

Telephone: +44 871 408 1337 / +1-888-887-3127
LiveSupport: Superb Support - Multiplay Gameservers
Ticket Support: Multiplay - Powered by Kayako Fusion Help Desk Software

Please note: There is no need to quote admin responses when responding to tickets, these are already present in our system.

[Remi]

He did give some hope in the reply above.

Hopefully they can figure something out, or else might need to find a new TeamSpeak provider.

[Remi]

The problem is pretty simple: query login is not an issue, you can create that when you are server admin.
It is really just about whitelisting, if that works then we can run TeamSync/Teamspeak Sync.

Multiplay TS servers are crippled and don't support the full features that TS offers.

They should maybe mention this in their product description link:
http://www.multiplaygameservers.com/voi ... amspeak-3/

[Boomsling]

As you pointed out, Whizzo confirms its being discussed and they already have ideas on how to implement it. Im sure they will accommodate this feature soon enough, have a little faith.

you can do what you need right now via Procon though..

[K]

Originally Posted by Remi

Multiplay TS servers are crippled and don't support the full features that TS offers.

I think your mistaking "crippled" with not allowing something to run which will potentially effect the performance of everyone's comms servers by overloading it with requests it was never intended to deal with.

I'm sure people wouldn't appreciate it if we allowed this and everyone's servers performed badly, now would they.

The query limit which is a default feature of TS is there to protect against just this sort of problem, so if the code in TeamSync is tripping that limit while working on just one server then their's a potentially a problem with their code which needs addressing.

[Remi]

I highly doubt it will lag other people's servers, since other server providers allow white listening.

TeamSync Enabled Server List : battlefield3

If you want, I can talk to Knyghtmare about TeamSync (he is the guy who made it) and how it's traffic works? If you won't some insurance that won't lag your other servers.

[K]

That assumes they are running anywhere near the amount of servers we are

The question I would ask is if there weren't issues with high query rates why would TS have a built in limit?

[Remi]

Originally Posted by K

That assumes they are running anywhere near the amount of servers we are

The question I would ask is if there weren't issues with high query rates why would TS have a built in limit?

Don't know to be honest, I'm just wondering why other providers allow it and you don't. For example: Rent Game Server, VPS, Dedicated Servers, Webhosting and more.

But I have notified Knyghtmare about this topic, and hopefully he will reply soon.

[Tricks_]

Originally Posted by K

I think your mistaking "crippled" with not allowing something to run which will potentially effect the performance of everyone's comms servers by overloading it with requests it was never intended to deal with.

I'm sure people wouldn't appreciate it if we allowed this and everyone's servers performed badly, now would they.

The query limit which is a default feature of TS is there to protect against just this sort of problem, so if the code in TeamSync is tripping that limit while working on just one server then their's a potentially a problem with their code which needs addressing.

scale the servers accordingly, provide the feature, advertise it -> make money

blame the need for this on EA btw, if in-game voip was properly available in BF3 there wouldn't be a need for teamsync or Teamspeak sync in the first place!

[Tricks_]

Originally Posted by K

I think your mistaking "crippled" with not allowing something to run which will potentially effect the performance of everyone's comms servers by overloading it with requests it was never intended to deal with.

I'm sure people wouldn't appreciate it if we allowed this and everyone's servers performed badly, now would they.

The query limit which is a default feature of TS is there to protect against just this sort of problem, so if the code in TeamSync is tripping that limit while working on just one server then their's a potentially a problem with their code which needs addressing.

well to properly work teamsync must be able to fire quite an amount of commands very quickly. I know its sounds like bad practice in programming to not be able to limit this, but if you understand what teamsync does and needs to do, you realize that you don't really want to slow it down.

[KnyghtMare]

TeamSync has been deployed to many servers already and seems to have no impact on the TeamSpeak3 server. Granted, with a host running many virtual servers there is greater concern but it's highly unlikely there's a ton of people out there going to be running it, not nearly enough to cripple a server imo.

Originally Posted by K

The query limit which is a default feature of TS is there to protect against just this sort of problem, so if the code in TeamSync is tripping that limit while working on just one server then their's a potentially a problem with their code which needs addressing.

Originally Posted by K

That assumes they are running anywhere near the amount of servers we are

The question I would ask is if there weren't issues with high query rates why would TS have a built in limit?

This is a bit disingenuous. The query limit is there to prevent brute force login attempts. Unless you are a trusted party (ie. in the whitelist) you are rate limited and banned for short periods of time if you try to login too many times. Furthermore, if we follow your line of reasoning, the existence of a whitelist proves that the TS3 developers intended for SOME applications to have unrestricted access to server query, an indication that their software can handle a fast query rate.

Finally, the design of TeamSync is not at issue here. To match TeamSpeak clients to BF3 players TeamSync needs to get user information for each person in the monitored channels. Given the lack of event driven design in the server query API TeamSync can't get around having to query this information each time it syncs between BF3 and TeamSpeak. Put simply, TeamSync is asking TeamSpeak for specific user information each time it "ticks". This means a lot of queries. This doesn't mean lagging a server, here's why:

Tick rate: TeamSync only asks for information at a configured rate. By default this is 4 seconds. Even if this was set to 1 second it'd still be an acceptable level of traffic.

Short messages: The messages sent between TeamSync and TeamSpeak are actually kind tiny, even the big result sets are only a couple of KB (and they are the REALLY big ones, ie. a list of all clients on a server).

All information is in memory: All information queried from TeamSpeak is stored in memory. There's no disk I/O. This makes requests extremely fast and efficient.

All in all the chances of degrading your services is slim to nil.

[K]

Originally Posted by KnyghtMare

TeamSync has been deployed to many servers already and seems to have no impact on the TeamSpeak3 server. Granted, with a host running many virtual servers there is greater concern but it's highly unlikely there's a ton of people out there going to be running it, not nearly enough to cripple a server imo.

Take you queries every 4 seconds and then multiply that up by 1500+ this is a lot of queries, and really has some potential to cause issues.

Originally Posted by KnyghtMare

This is a bit disingenuous. The query limit is there to prevent brute force login attempts. Unless you are a trusted party (ie. in the whitelist) you are rate limited and banned for short periods of time if you try to login too many times. Furthermore, if we follow your line of reasoning, the existence of a whitelist proves that the TS3 developers intended for SOME applications to have unrestricted access to server query, an indication that their software can handle a fast query rate.

While it was designed to be used externally yes from what you've said you doing lots of requests every 4 seconds I doubt very much this was anticipated by the developers as if this where the case a protocol with much less overhead would have been the better call.

Originally Posted by KnyghtMare

Finally, the design of TeamSync is not at issue here. To match TeamSpeak clients to BF3 players TeamSync needs to get user information for each person in the monitored channels. Given the lack of event driven design in the server query API TeamSync can't get around having to query this information each time it syncs between BF3 and TeamSpeak. Put simply, TeamSync is asking TeamSpeak for specific user information each time it "ticks". This means a lot of queries.

This sounds like a very strange way to do things. As I understand it your syncing BF3 with TS channels, now if this is case why aren't you using the fact that BF3 does have an event model so that you only query / make changes on TS when the relevant events happen in BF3, or did I miss something?

Even if this is not an option given the frequency of team changes etc the chances of needing to do something every 4 seconds seems very slim so wouldn't a much more conservative timing be more appropriate?

Originally Posted by KnyghtMare

This doesn't mean lagging a server, here's why:

Tick rate: TeamSync only asks for information at a configured rate. By default this is 4 seconds. Even if this was set to 1 second it'd still be an acceptable level of traffic.

Short messages: The messages sent between TeamSync and TeamSpeak are actually kind tiny, even the big result sets are only a couple of KB (and they are the REALLY big ones, ie. a list of all clients on a server).

Ok but take that and again multiply it up to the levels we run and your talking what 16Mbps.

Originally Posted by KnyghtMare

All information is in memory: All information queried from TeamSpeak is stored in memory. There's no disk I/O. This makes requests extremely fast and efficient.

All in all the chances of degrading your services is slim to nil

Not true its stored in the DB which needs to be queried, if your asking for lots of info across all servers...

[Boomsling]

GEEEK FIIIIIGHT!



Sorry couldnt resist.


How does TSviewer work then? That can report back who's on and in what channel with out this whitelist thing? ( Multiplay also have their own version of this too )

Could there be another way of getting the info from the TS3 server?

[K]

Originally Posted by Boomsling

How does TSviewer work then? That can report back who's on and in what channel with out this whitelist thing? ( Multiplay also have their own version of this too )

It doesn't use lots of calls every few seconds.

[Boomsling]

So it would seem that its just a matter of compromise to get this working?

Could the teamsync be adapted so that the user can define the rate at which it requested data and the Multiplay TS server be set up your end to only allow a certain rate? e.g 1 request per 60 seconds? To stop abuse anything polling the server above that rate is rejected and blocked for ten minutes.

It could be a varible you set in the teamsync ini.config file?

e.g.

;TS user refresh rate. Set number in seconds
voipserverqueryrate = 60

[K]

From what has been said, it still uses many queries at that point, that would still require whitelisting for everyone using it

What would be ideal is that its updated to be efficient enough to not require whitelisting.

[Mk1]

Have you tried this?

[Boomsling]

I've tried that but I have a sponsorship with BF3 rconNET Admin Tool • NEWS and prefer to continue to support them and promote them on our site/servers etc.

[KnyghtMare]

Originally Posted by K

From what has been said, it still uses many queries at that point, that would still require whitelisting for everyone using it

What would be ideal is that its updated to be efficient enough to not require whitelisting.

After initial startup the query rate is actually fairly decent. Unfortunately just the steps required to create the teamspeak channels for the game server violates the query rate limit for non-whitelisted IPs. Kinda sad.

The be more efficient TeamSync caches the channel list and the group information it uses to assign VOIP permissions. Beyond that it uses a polling method to talk with TeamSpeak because TeamSpeak has no eventing model for this kind of application. Yes, it could operate solely on BF3 server events but doing so introduces problems and holes in logic that cause players to be missed.

Every 4 seconds, by default, TeamSync queries TeamSpeak for: clients in any monitored channels, IP address of the clients in said channels. This boils down to 1 + # of players in TeamSpeak monitored channels + # of players that need moving/permission changes.

[jimbouk1977]

Originally Posted by Wizzo

It's the weekend and it was our Xmas party last night, so I don't expect to see any of the office staff around for a while . This is definitely something we are aware of and have some ideas how to implement what you are trying to achieve. Will discuss more on Monday and see what we can come up with.

It can be done as i do so with another host it was easy to set up & no issue or impact on there network with a white list (using a procon layer hosts ip) im using the procon plugin also

& that said host limits a lot of the TS3 options compared to MP so i cant see any reason why not just means a lot of adding ips to white list effort not hard imo. lets face it you use server quires to make sure we don't change our slot sizes right & for your ts3 viewer. (that said im not a network master & don't know how many queries you send out to do so)

That's not me being rude either !

Edit
Didnt read the whole thread just thought id jump in lol i like a bitch fight

[jimbouk1977]

After my above reply is procon plugin Teamspeak 3 sync supported by MP ? Teamspeak 3 sync

[Remi]

Originally Posted by jimbouk1977

After my above reply is procon plugin Teamspeak 3 sync supported by MP ? Teamspeak 3 sync

No, it demands the same thing as TeamSync.

[jimbouk1977]

OK then other hosts offer it without issues. so.....

I don't know MP's share of the coms (TS3) / BF3 / BC2 market compared to the rest but if they can do it without any issues what is the problem or is that just me being to logical ?