Opening Developer Console causes constant, irreversible networking overhead

[xonae]

Reproduction Steps

System Information:
Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU
64GB Memory
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU

Reproduction:
NOTE: This bug only occurs in places which you have edit access to, likely something to do with server log.

1. Join a blank baseplate and use Shift + F3 to open the networking debug menu.
2. Observe overall incoming data KB/s lower to 0 slowly after initial replication spike.
3. Press F9 to open the Developer Console.
4. Observe constant network overheard of ~8 KB/s in live games and ~35 KB/s in studio. (Numbers may vary in testing. Bigger and more complex places seem to have an increased overhead)
5. Close the Developer Console, observe that network overhead persists despite console being closed.
   

Expected Behavior

I expect to have any network overhead from the Developer Console cease after closing the Developer Console.

Actual Behavior

The consistent network overhead continues after closing the Developer Console, indicating requests are still being sent/received in the background.

This affects any sort of network benchmarking and debugging if you accidentally open the Developer Console, which could lead to developers believing their game is running worse than it actually is.

Custom networking solutions (anything other than the Shift + F3 menu) can not work around this as the network related properties of the Stats service are also affected by this. These custom solutions work fine if you do not open the Developer Console at all, but otherwise will cause issues.

Workaround

The only way to work around this is to not open the Developer Console at all if you’re monitoring network stats.
I’ve had to create a completely custom standalone and lightweight Developer Console replacement just to avoid the memory and networking overhead that the regular Developer Console has.

Issue Area: Engine
Issue Type: Performance
Impact: Moderate
Frequency: Constantly

[Mauio64 (Mauio)]

I am able to reproduce. Here’s a video of the behavior in Studio:

and one in Player as well:

Not like this was to anyone’s surprise, but this does not happen at all if the user cannot access the server log: RobloxPlayerBeta_HwCYbOd3tI.mp4

[xonae]

Forgot to mention that in my original post, thanks for reminding me!

[gigagiele]

Thanks for the report. The issue is being investigated.

[br_cks]

I’ve noticed this as well. My network received permanently raises by 30KB/s+ after opening console

[Sebastian_Wilson]

Any update on when this issue will be fixed? It seems to be still occurring for me.

[JJGeography]

This is causing a lot of issues in our game. Any updates?

[herfave_wastaken (herfave)]

Opening Developer Console with developer permissions causes network receive to spike and stay at a high level

Running into this as well and it’s become really frustrating to work with. It actually bogs down the RemoteEvent queue so I’m experiencing a log jam of events whenever the developer console spikes and raises the network. My team is using Chickynoid as a custom controller for our game and while it doesn’t impede gameplay for the player, they end up viewing other players snapping from snapshot to snapshot instead of smoothly interpolating.

This is still a problem today and is actively hurting our (CC: @JJGeography ) team’s production. It eats into the 50 KB/s budget we get for in-game networking which is weird since a debugging tool should have its own channel for sending data.

[BloxBot103]

We’ve fixed the issue! The overhead should be gone after closing the developer console. If there are any further difficulties, feel free to respond.