Making a dediacated server

[{ace of spades}]

I want to make a dedicated server for gaming. I have a server case, mobo, 3.2ghz p4 cpu and im buying the other parts.

What internet connection do i need to make it usable for gaming, and where is a cheap place to get this in the UK (if you dont know, dont worry but the most important thing is what speed i need).

Many thanks,

James

[sandrock]

What game servers are you planning to host? How many players?

[darksparkz]

Depends on the game and how many people like he said.

Usually you'd want a nice upload speed, tough to say what is required since it depends on the kind of game you want to host.

[Tyreal]

well in the FEAR demo i had played around with dedicated servers. On my server i had 8 people playing on this system. Its an intel 500mhz slot cpu with around 750 mb of ram. No one on the server had any bad lag and it played fine.

Depending on what game you will want a faster pc. This pc i used was the bare min and i would not recommend you use one this slow.

[su root]

The connection you need is highly dependant upon the game.

My suggestion is to play a game on the Internet, and use a program, like DU-Meter, to measure the actual bandwidth usage of you playing (particularly how much you are downloading from the server because this is how much per user your server will be uploading).

Counterstrike (as of 1.5) was about 4-5 kilobytes per user

I ran a small CS1.5 server for a while several years ago, at the time I had about 75 kilobytes per second of upload bandwidth. I could run a server of about 14 people fine, 15 with a little lag, and 16 with lots of lag. (Not counting local players).

EDIT: My suggestion is to find a connection with the least latency (although this generally isn't advertised), I've found cable to be less latent than DSL, satelite being the worst. I had people with pings of 60-90 on my cable, if your users are over 100ms then it's a bit slow, almost laggy for them.

[{ace of spades}]

Well it was going to be a CS:source server with abouot 16-20 players

[{ace of spades}]

Would this be good enough for a 20 man server and a 10 man server (both cs:s)

CPU AMD 2600+
RAM 512 MB DDR RAM
HDD 80 GB Hard Drive
Bandwidth 400 GB

[J-S]

well, just to throw something else out there...

you would want a static IP too along with your increased upload. If you don't get a static IP, it will change sporadically on you and you'd have to let whoever know that it is this instead of that. Normally, when you go such a route, the ISP you go through has a sort of "business" package which gives you x amount of static IP's and x bandwidth. This should suffice for a 1 game server. If the game server isn't a public one, than you can get by without the static IP.

However, you need to look at the cost of that package from your ISP. Often times, companies like branzone offer game hosting at costs less than what you would pay your ISP for increased bandwidth. Plus, you typically get a much better server and better support out of those hosting companies.

As for the specs you listed, I would say for a 10 man server that would be sufficient. For a 20 man...it may start to get a little laggy. You'd just have to try it out.

Just a thought...

[sandrock]

Would this be good enough for a 20 man server and a 10 man server (both cs:s)

CPU AMD 2600+
RAM 512 MB DDR RAM
HDD 80 GB Hard Drive
Bandwidth 400 GB

System looks fine, you dont need an enterprise-class server to run a game server. However, what exactly do you mean by "Bandwidth 400 GB"? The total bandwidth per month doesn't mean much, its the speed per second upload. For up to 30 players, I would try to get at least 2-3 Mbps upload.

[darksparkz]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=373795

That's for CS, but some of its basics should apply to CS:S.

Are you planning to run two servers, both a 10man and 20man from one system? It'll be quite tough, for a 10 people server, you'd want at least 700mb upload. For up to 20 man or 30, you might want to drop another stick of 256 or 512 ram in there.

[su root]

That sounds like a game server colo quote.

For bandwidth:
400GB/month of bandwidth / (60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 31 days) = 149kilobytes per second.
30 users * 5kilobytes per second = 150kilobytes per second.

Looks like you'll be OK for 30 simultaneous users, even if it was full, around the clock, every day. I'm assuming this is a colo quote, and that the bandwidth is available as needed... if this is your home connection, then you would need a sustained upload of 150k/s (preferably more) to handle that user load.

I would punch that up to a Gig of ram, but besides that, it sounds like it's plenty.

[gorilly]

Would this be good enough for a 20 man server and a 10 man server (both cs:s)

CPU AMD 2600+
RAM 512 MB DDR RAM
HDD 80 GB Hard Drive
Bandwidth 400 GB


there is a CS:S server called skybluegaming.net based in the uk.

its a P3 3.4 with 1GB RAM running on debian linux, its runs games with 24 people fine