[bf1942] server hardware question

[James Gurney]

On 3/4/2006 11:53 AM, Brigham Stevens wrote:
> hi list! So quiet on here lately.  I have had no traffic since Feb 18?

I'm guessing most of the traffic is over on the private, ranked server 
list these days.

> I'm investigating putting my own server together and hosting in a colo 
> facility versus renting a dedicated unranked server from a GSP.  They 
> offer 1GB bandwidth per month.... So I'm pretty sure I will need to buy 
> some more bulk bandwith - any ballpark on how much bandwidth (per month) 
> a 64 player server uses if say it is only full %50 of the time? Gee it 
> would be spiffy if someone had a BF2 bandwidth calculator web page!

Back when the demo came out, we hosted 2 32 player servers, and they 
used about 8Mbps at any one time. You could make a guestimate based on 
that, but traffic usage is a LOT.

However, unless things have changed, you're not going to get anywhere 
near 64 players or even 32 on an unranked server. People don't want to 
play on unranked servers.. We've actually closed ours down and gone back 
to DC because of this.

> I know the BF2 server is basically single threaded, but since I'm buying 
> the server I want either dual core or 2 cpus so I can do other stuff 
> with it, and hopefully it will be more useful for at least 2 years.

Right, dual core or dual proc makes no difference to one game instance, 
but it will allow you to run more than one server, or other stuff, in 
the future.

> So basically I'm trying to put a 1U rig together using newegg with a 
> budget of 1,500 - 2,000 max, starting with one of their 1 U Bare bones 
> servers.

This is how I built our server.. but these days I'm not so sure it's the 
best way to go any more. I saw an ad on Slashdot the other day linking 
to Sun servers.. You can get a 1U Opteron box from them with no OS, 
Linux compatible, starting at $745. For server class hardware, this is a 
pretty killer deal:

http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process=SunStore&cmdViewProduct_CP&catid=138714

Not to say it will work for you, but it's worth considering..

Hope this helps,

James