Checking a slow server

If your server is slow or your game or bot keeps disconnecting, narrow down the cause in the order below. It's usually one of traffic, CPU, memory or disk.

1. Have you gone over today's traffic allowance?

If you exceed the daily traffic allowance, your speed is limited for the rest of that day. Check today's usage on the server details page in your Dashboard. If it's not enough, you can buy more traffic right on the same page. We'll also email you once you pass 80% of your allowance.

2. Check CPU and memory (Linux)

Install htop to see usage at a glance.

sudo apt install -y htop
htop

Bars at the top: usage per CPU core, Mem (memory), Swp (swap)
Press F6 and sort by PERCENT_CPU or PERCENT_MEM to see right away what's using the most resources.
Press q to exit.

If you see this

CPU stays at 100% — The program at the top is the cause. If it's a program you started, check its code or settings (infinite loops, too many tasks). The fix differs depending on whether only one core or every core is maxed out, so also see Single-core or multi-core?.
An unknown program is using all the CPU — Your server may have been hacked and be running a mining program. Change the server password right away and follow Basic server security setup. If in doubt, backing up your data and moving to a new server is the safest option.
Mem is almost full — See When memory runs low.

To see how much load the server is handling as numbers:

nproc     # Number of CPU cores
uptime    # The 3 load averages at the end (1-, 5- and 15-minute averages)

If the load average stays higher than the number of cores, the server has a lot of work for its specs.

3. Is the disk full?

df -h /

If Use% is over 90%, clean up by following When your disk is full.

4. Is the network dropping?

Check whether connections from the server to the outside are stable.

ping -c 10 8.8.8.8

If packet loss on the last line isn't 0%, the network is unstable. If you suspect your public game server is dropping because it's under attack, see the Security Zone section of the network selection guide. (The network can't be changed after the server is created, so you'd have to move to a new server.)

Windows server

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc).

Processes tab: Click the CPU or Memory column header to sort by usage.
Performance tab: See CPU, memory, disk and network usage as graphs.

If it's still slow

Check Service status for a service-wide outage, and if the problem continues, let technical support know. If you include what you checked above (traffic, CPU/memory usage, ping results) with your inquiry, we can help you much faster.