Game Server

[Will]

OK guys, I'm looking for some help, because info is a bit hard to come by.

If wanted to set up a Half-life server, what sort of kit do I need? Is it just a box with a nice processor, lots of RAM, and a fat pipe? And has anyone got any figures for how many player could be supported on various figures?

Not that I just found out that SDSL is available in my area

 

[Wij]

SDSL ?

What speed, from who ?

(dunno much about servers btw )

 

[Will]

From EDnet, up to 2.3M bursting, though the 2M sustained maximum may prove a little expensive.

Depends if I can get some mates to help split the cost for a private server.

 

[Testin da Cable]

Your server specs depend mostly on how big your ego is Itchy

In the case of a dedicated server sitting on the end of a DSL or cable connection, it's very unpractical to set up a 'leet' box [unless you're going to be using it for other stuff too] because you're limited by your upstream-bandwidth anyway: small upstream=few users=no need for leet box

I found that a p100 with 32 megs ram running linux and a half-life dedicated server could cater nicely to ~6 clients on a lan, but I hasten to add that I tested that more than a year ago so it may well be that expectations [but performance too] have increased.

Using heavier hardware [bigger cpu, more ram, faster drives] will let you cater to a greater ammount of clients, but more importantly imo, it will let you load your stuff faster. This is important because players don't want to sit around waiting for the server to finally change levels, they want to get at the person who just fragged them [as you and I well know ] thus even if you can only squeeze in 6 modem players at once, because your server will be very quick in other respects they will be quite happy.

My personal server is [or rather was as I changed it last night] a 750Mhz duron with 256 megs ram. It had 5 10Gb UW-SCSI drives striped in a software raid.
I used it as webserver, ftpserver, UTserver, file&printserver and other things.
Running the UT server, it would idle, with a memory usage of about 30Mb[iirc]. The only time it would visably do something was when someone connected or when a level changed giving me the idea that it would be possible to start 8 [256/30] servers if I so chose. The only time I managed to get the cpu usage up was when I started a 400 bot ctf game on lavagiant heh. The server didn't really like that .

Anyhoo, there is some math that you can do to work out how many users you can fit into your bandwidth. Server-side tuning is involved as you have to throttle your users to a maximum amount of bandwidth per user. Now I can't remember how many Kb/s the 'average' HL client likes to eat, but let's call it 3 [to keep modem peeps happy]. Let's imagine you manage to get a 1x1Mbit DSL [1 down/1up] from some ISP [you should be so lucky =P]. 1 Mbit=1024 Kbit= 128Kb/s [kilobyte] theoretical maximum. Call it 110, in fact call it 100 just to be sure [always round numbers down when talking about servers heh]
So, in your 100Kb/s you can fit 30 clients each eating 3 Kb/s [or 15 on 6 etc.], but be aware that your bandwidth is now gone, so if you feel like leeching the latest copy of XP off some warez site somewhere, either you are screwing your clients -or- they are screwing you heh. Such is life .

Coming back to the subject of player comfort sticking 30 players together isn't generally a good idea [unless you're running a Tribes server] so the solution is to split your clients across multiple servers running in the same machine. In this example I'd say 3 servers with 10 clients each seems cool. Linux, and any M$ >= NT should be able to manage that just fine, but I wouldn't advise running on w98 heh.

Woo, a big post from ickle me hehe. Hope I managed to help out dude

ps. If you get DSL before me, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN YOU MANGY DOG YOU!!!!!5774

 

[Wij]

Check the Ts & Cs on your contract with the ISP too

 

[Will]

Well, the SDSL would be a business contract, so it'd be perfectly OK running a server off it. The problem is budget

As for my cable modem, I ain't allowed to run a public server. Password-protected is ok.