Largest go server? Interesting...

What, was IGS down? hehe

-frl

-frl

Ren-Li,

I'm not surprised. KGS simply has the better user interface.

IGS has a terrible way to find another player---you have to ask
them, one by one, without any clue about what they want. That's
the reason why I came over to KGS, and I'd be surprised if I'd
be the only one.

Other problems are software hangups. I used gGo and had repeated
cases in which I couldn't play and had to restart the client. I
don't know whether the cause was the server or the client
though. I only know that closing and restarting the client
solved the problem, but it's not nice.

The better system will win. The Internet is a buyer's market,
and a quick one. :-)

Hans-Georg

--
No mail, please.

On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 23:27:26 +0100, Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgN...@michna.com>
wrote:

Though I have slowly started to move into IGS, I don't know why, but
I do think that the mainstream go players still us IGS, sure the clients
did not meet my requirements, but with WinIGC, and time that I have
spent in IGS I think I'd give it a small edge.

Though it is hard for me to part from KGS, so I'll continue playing on
both servers.

The only thing that kinda pushed me away from KGS (just a tiny bit)
was the the authors were so reluctant to help promote other clients for
their server, I read Mr Schubert's point of view on Sensei and it made
sense, though there is so much going on IGS.

Trunk

"7777777777" <77...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d5f7tv8vkptef42r1...@4ax.com...

that aside... 7777 wrote...

however this isnt true, such commands on igs such as info and if they have
toggled looking to be true or not can tell you what they want. indeed most
players tend to have stated for those who take the trouble to look what time
preferences they they desire in a game so what your really saying is that
you went over to kgs because your lazy. too much work to 'stats' someone.
however even with this about the same work is required for getting games
isnt there? i mean you still have to click and bring up the challenges see
the time they want hmm single click instead of right click and select yeah i
guess that is alot of work.

Trunk wrote..

i agree with you i wish the source code was available, would be nice to have
different clients to choose from instead of cgoban

"Fu, Ren-Li" <fr...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:5fMAb.4509$sr2....@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...

-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

A couple of thousand go players are not any big load for a good
server. The amount of data is tiny.

The underlying problem is that these servers don't make money,
so they're on the level of hobby machines, nothing professional.

Perhaps the client should have an advertising banner. :-) Not
that I like it.

I would gladly pay some obligatory annual usage fee for KGS,
particularly if that ensured increasing software power and
quality.

Jesus Ollie, I sure hope your a better go player than a martial
artist. BTW; What rank are you?

Magni

I'm 2 dan - I can beat the korean 2 dans at their local club. I am currently
7-2 against Mr. Kim, who is a 2 dan who played with Cho HunHyun.

Also, I would say I'm 2 dan since I won this summer's TGC self-pairing 7-0
while registered as 1 dan.

By the way, I've been doing kung fu for almost 15 years now. Not that it has
anything to do with Go.

So what's your rank? Just curious.

-frl

For the network load, the biggest problem with having a huge number of
users online is indeed that clients are notified when anybody enters
or leaves a room you are in. Luckily, many of the people in the
biggest KGS rooms are there mostly for just the game list, and not for
the chatting or to see the user lists. The next version of KGS will
begin a process of solving this problem, by putting many of the open
games (ie, games where somebody is looking for another person to play
against) in a separate list outside of any room. Once that is done,
you only need to be in a room if you really do want to chat with
people there, so I expect you'll see a lot of people in smaller rooms
where their friends are instead of all piled into one huge room as
happens now.

Updating the game lists is not a huge cost at all. For the clients,
none of this is much of a cost - the bandwidth used by each client is
quite small, about 100 bytes per second on average. Even a 1200 baud
modem can handle this much. If the number of people in a room were to
grow, this would go up, but again I am working to solve that.

To sum it up, KGS can grow beyond 1,000 users at once very easily, and
with some work can grow far beyond 1,000 users at once. I am always
working to make sure that any problems like this are solved before
they become problems.

Now to address this original thread - yes, KGS is busier than IGS at
some times of the day, but it is still overall a smaller server. KGS
seems to have more European users, so if you only look at peak hours
for Europe you may think that KGS is bigger. But IGS has far more
Japanese users, so you you compare the two servers at peak hour for
Japan, you will see that IGS at its peak time is much busier than KGS
ever is! (As for which server has more American users, I have no idea.
American daytime/early evening hours overlap with both Japan and
Europe, so by just judging number of people connected it is difficult
to tell.)

"Icarii" <ica...@zoominternet.net> wrote in message news:<3fd42715$1...@corp.newsgroups.com>...

> -frl

Where is this club, just out of curiousity?

I guess simply faster hardware and a faster Internet connection
would also solve most of the performance problems, right?

Not that efficiency is something to sneer at.

Does KGS earn any money at all? Does any of the go servers earn
any money?

While I'm at it, I keep getting kicked out of KGS over the last
weeks. Have to log on again and find that, very unfortunately,
the Resume button never works in this situation.

Any ideas about this problem? Is this a typical weekend
phenomenon of the server being overloaded?

As for getting kicked out, no that has nothing to do with the server.
It has yet to disconnect anybody because of resources. Every time I've
tracked down a problem like this before, it has come from network
trouble somewhere; sometimes at the ISP that houses KGS, sometimes at
the ISP where the user is connecting from, somewhere in the middle. It
takes a fair amount of work to track this down, and in the end there
usually isn't much that can be done about it. :-(

Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote in message news:<026btvcou8e5u06s1...@4ax.com>...

With any modern go-server this is unlikely. If the server is badly enough
written to suffer from scalability, it would need complete rewrite at about
1000 concurrent users.

The real problems come from elsewhere. AFAIK. for IGS, there's not been a
single platform change that's been painless.
--
ObOlli ...and he thought I'm serious! Hahahaha...

William,

perhaps KGS and its client could be improved such that it is
more resilient? The client could try once more after a little
more time or it could try to reconnect automatically after a
broken connection.

Are these TCP connections that break? In that case the only way
would be to try to automatically reconnect. In other words,
attempt once or twice to do automatically what currently the
user has to do.

But then maybe this is a problem that goes away on its own as
the Internet becomes faster and better. I certainly hope so.

One could just as well be connected to the other, with just
a bit of doing -- not very much muss or fuss involved at all ...

Rather curious. I found that KGS players were -unwilling- to
devote their time to any player with "guest" or "tilde" stigmatization.

I encountered a few of these myself. On a Win98SE OS,
for example, I could not operate RealPlayer while using the
java-based gGo program. There are, quite likely, a few more
bugs to be ironed out. Fortunately for us, the programmers are
still busy at work improving -each- of their respective products.

I don't find that market tastes are always determinative of
who the "winner" really is, or ought to be. This is why, in
addition to the market, we have such things as a Ministry of
Culture (in some countries that care), or other things such as
broadcast regulations over mass-media multi-ownerships.

The servers are making money, whether by subscription
fees, or by gimmicky sales on the side, or even by donations.

Perhaps the super-client should -block- the advertising banner?

You can send your money to me and I'll make certain that
the -proper- people (at KGS, or wherever) receive it. :-)

Yes, as a matter of fact there is some money changing hands,
and hopefully a cadre of professionals (and strong amateurs) may
be supported by it.

"Hans-Georg Michna" <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote:
> ... perhaps KGS and its client could be improved such that it

Some are -privy- to past scuttlebut concerning consolidation
(incorporation) of other Go Servers (by IGS). If William Shubert
is interested in going -stratospheric- he is invited to contact IGS
via Western Civilization's emissary at: tw...@panda-igs.joyjoy.net .
Something can be worked out whereby KGS finds a more attractive
sponsor, considerably more resources/prestige than now enjoyed.
"Major Contracts" aside, this would represent the brass ring deluxe.
All in a day's work, evidently, though "flame wars" were less boring.

- regards
- jb

I think that's another good point of KGS.

Some problem(s) with each point are: (a) once promising
a "newbie" that "guest" sign-on is perfectly `ok' and that games
could be available, the "newbie" quickly -discovers- that human
nature (at KGS) indicates otherwise. Merely a fact of human nature
itself, not any -reflection- upon KGS, but a -feature- nevertheless.
Not likely to obtain much by way of "discussion" in KGS chatrooms.
So it is discovered that, even with overtures made on account of
allowing "guest" participation, there are implicit encouragements
for registration versus disincentives for not being registered. The
earlier argument for allowing "full capabilities" awarded to guests
then tends to fall flat, because "guests" are not really accorded
those "full capabilities" unless other players are willing to do so.
As for (b) the "tilde" controversy, this has been previously beaten
to death, with William Shubert admitting that at best it is simply an
interim means testing for purposes of discovery. The upshot is
that, once human nature is provided free sway on the server, it
is instead rapidly learned that raw human nature is not quite so
"friendly" as it is cracked up to be: on both sides of the "tilde"
matter are given the arguments that people are -not- "friendly"
(on KGS): more generally they are not "friendly" in cyberspace
as they are not always "friendly" in real life, even when supplied
an opportunity for face-to-face encounter. Similarly, people are
(c) not quite so "friendly" as to treat those of "guest" status with
championed high ideals of equality, even though in many other
cultures, a "guest" is considered to be of higher status than the
ordinary ("registered") resident. Still, those observations were
being -enabled- by the presence of such qualities on KGS, even
though earlier (and fundamental) conclusions had already been
drawn by the managers of IGS many years ago, without any need
for additional experimentation by these 21st-Century evalautions.

The IGS response had been to recognize that "guests" would
not be treated with the -respect- that "guests" deserve, owing to
such problems inherent in a medium without face-to-face _harage_
(Japanese for "stomach talk"). Painful as it was, the decision was
rendered to disallow "guest" participation in game play altogether.
And, rather than commit the sin of stigmatization, there was never
rendered the need for "tilde" designations upon players who, for
whatever reasons, wished not to play those of weaker rank. The
alternative, then, is to better impress upon those of weaker rank
the need for -outside- study (if necessary), using -other- means
such as books and teachers, applying more -diligence- toward
the end of self-improvement (whether on or off the board), if a
game with stronger rated players were desired. This is -not- to
say that gratuitious teaching could not occur, irrespective of the
server identified, but that an expectation for gratuitous teaching
might be misplaced. In any case, no player seeking to become
stronger should think the task an -automated- procedure entirely
at the behest of some particular server, and no other method(s).
More commonalities in human nature outweigh any assumptions
to their possible "differences" in the aggregate, and differences
rendered even -more- negligable by supportive claims to those
larger quantities of aggregates, in account-connection databases.

- regards
- jb

>> jazze...@coolmail.com (-) wrote:

>Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote:

> nature (at KGS) indicates otherwise. ...

Guests can play with other guests and tilde players can play
with other tilde players. They can even play with each other.

You other assertions are not true, as far as my own experience
is concerned. When I came to KGS not long ago, rated players
played rated games with me, even though I had at first no, later
a tentative rating. I quickly got a rating.

I think KGS is fine in this respect.

Why do guests need to play (only) with other guests, or tilde
players play (only) with other tilde players, if as you appaer to suggest
there are no stigmatization preferences on the part of the registered
players at KGS to shun guests and/or tilde players?

I agree that KGS is fine, though for other reasons. For example,
when I was helping an elderly gentleman (somewhat confused by
his computer) to -obtain- an Internet Account on a Go Server, the
feature of -rapid- connection and playability on KGS was a bonus.
Without -immediate- access to one's email account registration for
IGS can pose a critical hazard. But that's like saying "good fences
make good neighbors." And I wonder about the "fences" on KGS.

- regards
- jb

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Actually the tilde's purpose is the stigma. The purpose is to
shame the user into better behavior.

As to guests, I don't care much for them, because I suspect that
permanent guests only want to hide their identity for bad
reasons.

I think the purpose of guest entry is so somebody can see what
it looks like and how it works before registering properly. They
can even play a game with another guest if they like. Therefore
I would not want to afford full recognition to guests and I
don't see any need to do that.

And "better behavior" means not playing stronger opponents?

Who knows? They might be Jewish, or they could be Niggers.

Indeed. KGS seems to be a -very- "friendly" place ... :-(

- regards
- jb

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