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Topic Starter Topic: Setting up a Dedicated Server and I need your input! :-)
TaDoW
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PostPosted: 03-11-2005 04:49 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hi everyone, I (obviously) just registered, but already have a pretty good online presence in other areas. Right now I'm looking at setting up a dedicated machine for a Q3A server, but I'd like to track down information from as many people as possible before getting started. Can anyone help me out with the following questions:

>> For All these questions, assume a dual 2 ghz box with 2 gb of ram. My network connection is direct into a Level 3 backbone b/c I'll be setting this up on a dedicated machine down at my datacenter.<<

1.) Can you run game servers for different games (i.e.: Q3A, CS, UT2k3, etc.) on the same machine without a significant performance impact?

2.) How many individual game servers (of quake) can you run on the same box (if that's the only thing running on the box) before it starts to slow the server down?

3.) How many players can a game box handle before it gets bogged down?

4.) What ping time do you consider a "good" ping time?

5.) what are your favorite games to play online?

6.) Anything else you want to share?



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R00k
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PostPosted: 03-11-2005 05:01 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Looks kinda dead right now, but you'll get some replies. :icon31:
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TaDoW
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PostPosted: 03-11-2005 05:10 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


R00k wrote:
Looks kinda dead right now, but you'll get some replies. :icon31:


cool, I'll keep my fingers crossed =)



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axbaby
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PostPosted: 03-11-2005 09:19 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


TaDoW wrote:

1.) Can you run game servers for different games (i.e.: Q3A, CS, UT2k3, etc.) on the same machine without a significant performance impact?

-don't know

2.) How many individual game servers (of quake) can you run on the same box (if that's the only thing running on the box) before it starts to slow the server down?

-test and see

3.) How many players can a game box handle before it gets bogged down?

-again you have to test and see ... you may need to adjust your server config dependant on the amount of players
" rate maxpackets sv_fps"

4.) What ping time do you consider a "good" ping time?

-i'd say 40-50ms ping is an average

5.) what are your favorite games to play online?

quake3

6.) Anything else you want to share?

-Eraser smells funny



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TaDoW
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PostPosted: 03-11-2005 10:13 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


axbaby wrote:
TaDoW wrote:

1.) Can you run game servers for different games (i.e.: Q3A, CS, UT2k3, etc.) on the same machine without a significant performance impact?

-don't know

2.) How many individual game servers (of quake) can you run on the same box (if that's the only thing running on the box) before it starts to slow the server down?

-test and see

3.) How many players can a game box handle before it gets bogged down?

-again you have to test and see ... you may need to adjust your server config dependant on the amount of players
" rate maxpackets sv_fps"

4.) What ping time do you consider a "good" ping time?

-i'd say 40-50ms ping is an average

5.) what are your favorite games to play online?

quake3

6.) Anything else you want to share?

-Eraser smells funny


axbaby, I appreciate your input... part of the thing I'm up against is that I need to set up a server right off the bat, 100% dedicated for this, because I don't want it to affect my other online projects (business partners don't believe in online gaming :-(, so they don't want me wasting existing company resources on it )

I will always be testing and re-configging it, but at this point I'm just trying to get an idea of what is possible before investing in a new machine (also so I know what hardware to get).

If you have experience in the matter, can you give me ballpark figures of what you've run into in terms of # of game servers running, and players on the same box?

Thanks much =)



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R00k
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 12:52 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


It depends a lot on what you're doing with it. Do you plan on hosting servers and charging for people to run them commercially? Or are you just wanting to set up a server or two that you and some buddies can play on when you want?

Q3 doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth, but if there are a lot of other network applications running on your pipe, it can affect your ping times quite a bit.

It also doesn't take a very beefy machine to run a Q3 server in dedicated mode. But I think it starts to climb exponentially when you start running multiple servers on the same box. I've run an OSP Clan Arena server on a local network with 6 players, on a 650mHz box with 512 of memory, and the thing never even broke a sweat.

The thing you want to worry about is setting your rate, maxpackets, sv_fps, and such according to your actual bandwidth and network connection, and the number of players you'll have on your server. You look at your connection and make the settings - if you're going to have just a couple people on it, you can get away with pretty high rates and such, but the more people you plan to have on it, the more you'll have to lower the settings, and look for a happy medium in between. A lot of it really is trial-and-error.
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R00k
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PostPosted: 03-12-2005 12:54 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Oh, and as far as the multi-processor box. I don't think Q3 does multi-threading, so having multiple processors will probably only benefit you if you're running more than one server on the computer. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that's the way it is.
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axbaby
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PostPosted: 03-13-2005 05:09 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


you didn't mention your bandwidth ,
the most important factor in this scenario.

hi ROOK :)



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TaDoW
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PostPosted: 03-13-2005 10:44 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Awesome, thanks for the info Rook =)

I am hoping to set up a commercial server .. and that's why I'm willing to put in the good hardware and so forth. If we could actually use a dual proc setup to allow even more games, that would be wicked. Obviously the name of the game here is getting as many people playing on one box without impacting the performance, and I want to see if it's going to be cost effective.

Axbaby - when you say "bandwidth" ... do you mean my actual net connection? if so, that's not going to be a limiting factor. it will be a gigabit connection to a level 3 backbone down in our hosting facility. The amount of bandwidth use isn't too much of a factor for us either, our other online projects use hundreds of megabits/sec, so adding another 1 or 2 or 10 mb/sec isn't going to end up being a big deal, since the cost is only around $50/mb/sec for us.

ping times and such should be good - I have a friend (actually the system admin at our facility) who used to run his clan server there, and ping times were 10 - 15 locally (we're in seattle), <50 in LA, and ~100 on east coast, and that was before they were on Level 3, that was with verio.

Since the commercial server thing is out of the bag ...

Are consistently low ping times good enough to get people to join an inexpensive community/server (like $9.95/month)? What things would you look for in a server before you were willing to shell out cash to play on one?

Also - what commercial/pay-to-play servers are your favorites right now?



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Eraser
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PostPosted: 03-14-2005 05:23 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I do not smell funny :tear:
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axbaby
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PostPosted: 03-14-2005 12:43 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


TaDoW wrote:

Are consistently low ping times good enough to get people to join an inexpensive community/server (like $9.95/month)? What things would you look for in a server before you were willing to shell out cash to play on one?



things i would want from a server host

-a beefy linux system or a choice of a windows system if my game isn't available in Linux
-ftp file hosting .. minimum 200MB of storage plus the game files
-bandwidth monitoring of server and file hosting for abuse so others your hosting don't slow down my server
-full access to my server to re-start and shutdown the game
-i would pay $4 a player per month
-i would have a choice which games to run .. one day one game another day another game
-a phone number i can call for help .. email is too slow when you need things done now

i've had great hosting in the past .. he made sure that the games he hosted were not resource hogs and that everyone was happy.

clanservers http://www.clanservers.net/
is one example of how it should be done

for some reason my firefox system doen't want to open clanservers page.


i just smelled Erasure and it turns out it was me :(



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signa
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PostPosted: 03-14-2005 07:17 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


a few notes:
    q3 does have a console option for multiple cpu, but as far as I know, its has always been broke and q3 cant use multiple cpu's.

    I would say a good ping time would be 50 and below. this is game dependant, but q3 is very ping dependant.

    for q3, I would stick to around 14 to 20 max players. 14 is good for ctf, and team games, 20 or so for ffa and insta type games.

    I would keep the default sv_fps of 20, but you could bump it up to 25. going higher generally wont help much on a net game. for sv_maxpackets go with 10000 minimum, and 25000 max. imo I would go the minimum.

    being able to telnet into the machine and restart a server, or change mods would be nice. q3 can only change mods on startup.

    check this chart for bandwidth requirements.
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TaDoW
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PostPosted: 03-14-2005 10:33 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


axbaby wrote:
TaDoW wrote:

Are consistently low ping times good enough to get people to join an inexpensive community/server (like $9.95/month)? What things would you look for in a server before you were willing to shell out cash to play on one?



things i would want from a server host

-a beefy linux system or a choice of a windows system if my game isn't available in Linux
-ftp file hosting .. minimum 200MB of storage plus the game files
-bandwidth monitoring of server and file hosting for abuse so others your hosting don't slow down my server
-full access to my server to re-start and shutdown the game
-i would pay $4 a player per month
-i would have a choice which games to run .. one day one game another day another game
-a phone number i can call for help .. email is too slow when you need things done now

i've had great hosting in the past .. he made sure that the games he hosted were not resource hogs and that everyone was happy.

clanservers http://www.clanservers.net/
is one example of how it should be done

for some reason my firefox system doen't want to open clanservers page.


i just smelled Erasure and it turns out it was me :(




Awesome that was loaded with info =)

Thanks much!

Also - Signa, thanks for your input too, very useful :-)

We're hoping to get something going pretty soon, and we're not going to go half-assed on it. I hope we can (at the very least) match what others are doing, if not beat it.



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Eraser
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PostPosted: 03-15-2005 02:14 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


axbaby wrote:
i just smelled Erasure and it turns out it was me :(


You don't think that dead rat in the corner has something to do with it?

*sniff sniff*

Ah no you're right, it's definitely you

:p
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R00k
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PostPosted: 03-15-2005 02:56 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


axbaby wrote:
you didn't mention your bandwidth ,
the most important factor in this scenario.

hi ROOK :)


HIES AX! :D

Life treating you better these days?
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axbaby
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PostPosted: 03-15-2005 07:17 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


it's good enough for now bro ,lot's has changed ..lot's yet to go.
thanks for axing :)



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R00k
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PostPosted: 03-15-2005 07:47 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Glad to hear things have changed for the better man. Keep it up. :icon14:
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