<div>Gonna have a few people over on the lan this weekend. How many do you think i can host on a Athlon K8 800MHz with 768MB of ram?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I'm hoping at least 8-10, but will 800mhz be fast enough even for a small local server?<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 6, 2007 1:24 PM, Alan Clegg <<a href="mailto:alan@clegg.com">alan@clegg.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="Ih2E3d">Georgecooldude wrote:<br><br>> What do you think would run on a 2.4ghz quad core xeon and 4-5gb ram?<br>> 80gb 10,000rpm drive on 100mbit connection?<br><br></div>Too many people ask this question for me not to put my nose directly
<br>into it... here goes.<br><br>As with my day job, these questions can't really be answered without<br>knowing a lot more about the environment. Yes, lots of things depend on<br>CPU, disk, ram, etc. but your network connection is much more important.
<br><br>I have yet to see any true traffic analysis of a COD4 server, so I can't<br>tell you how many instances you could run over a true 100mbit LAN<br>connection.<br><br>When people say "I have a 100mbit connection", that's all well and good,
<br>as that is what you have decided to pay for.<br><br>I doubt, however, that your provider gives you that full 100mbit to the<br>outside world.<br><br>Take as an example, my house. I have a gigabit switch between some<br>
servers, 100mbit in most rooms, and 54mbit wireless. With all of the<br>wonderful infrastructure, I still only have 4Mbit to the outside world<br>(thanks, Timewarner for not offering FIOS). I guess that I could claim<br>
that my COD4 server has "GIGABIT CONNECTIVITY", as it is connected to<br>the gig-e switch.... that does not mean that traffic coming out of my<br>server to the outside world is anywhere near gig speeds.<br><br>Even if your provider has multi-gig connections to the outside world,
<br>consider how many other people they have sold "100mbit" connections to?<br><br>It doesn't take many people cranking full 100mbit flows to flood a gig<br>network... See if you can get your provider to give you their
<br>oversubscribe numbers. How many 100mbit connections are they selling on<br>that 10gig interconnect? Does it look possible?<br><br>Then, you have to consider transit latency. Even if your provider has<br>multi-gig connections to their provider, think about where the flows
<br>pass over exchange points. When I look at the output of traceroute, I<br>see a couple of places that it is obvious that network traffic is<br>hitting some sort of roadblock.<br><br>From a couple of traceroutes:<br><br>
5 <a href="http://tran-01-so-3-0-0-0.chrl.twtelecom.net/" target="_blank">tran-01-so-3-0-0-0.chrl.twtelecom.net</a> (<a href="http://66.192.242.83/" target="_blank">66.192.242.83</a>) 11.216 ms<br>15.932 ms 12.966 ms<br>
6 <a href="http://sl-gw25-atl-11-0.sprintlink.net/" target="_blank">sl-gw25-atl-11-0.sprintlink.net</a> (<a href="http://144.223.47.109/" target="_blank">144.223.47.109</a>) 43.524 ms 78.588<br>ms 79.817 ms<br><br>----
<br><br> 5 <a href="http://66.192.240.22/" target="_blank">66.192.240.22</a> (<a href="http://66.192.240.22/" target="_blank">66.192.240.22</a>) 12.108 ms 12.603 ms 11.341 ms<br> 6 <a href="http://equinix.ash.cw.net/" target="_blank">
equinix.ash.cw.net</a> (<a href="http://206.223.115.73/" target="_blank">206.223.115.73</a>) 22.974 ms 22.492 ms 21.183 ms<br> 7 <a href="http://so-7-0-0-dcr2.amd.cw.net/" target="_blank">so-7-0-0-dcr2.amd.cw.net</a> (
<a href="http://195.2.10.250/" target="_blank">195.2.10.250</a>) 114.699 ms 112.953 ms<br>110.524 ms<br> 8 <a href="http://so-4-0-0-ycr2.skt.cw.net/" target="_blank">so-4-0-0-ycr2.skt.cw.net</a> (<a href="http://206.24.147.198/" target="_blank">
206.24.147.198</a>) 130.159 ms<br><br>----<br><br> 4 <a href="http://66-194-17-105.static.twtelecom.net/" target="_blank">66-194-17-105.static.twtelecom.net</a> (<a href="http://66.194.17.105/" target="_blank">66.194.17.105
</a>) 4.379 ms 5.681<br>ms 3.796 ms<br> 5 <a href="http://66.192.251.27/" target="_blank">66.192.251.27</a> (<a href="http://66.192.251.27/" target="_blank">66.192.251.27</a>) 65.738 ms 65.757 ms 65.204 ms<br> 6 * * *
<br> 7 <a href="http://58.229.14.41/" target="_blank">58.229.14.41</a> (<a href="http://58.229.14.41/" target="_blank">58.229.14.41</a>) 221.330 ms 220.193 ms 220.977 ms<br> 8 <a href="http://58.229.12.30/" target="_blank">
58.229.12.30</a> (<a href="http://58.229.12.30/" target="_blank">58.229.12.30</a>) 224.661 ms 221.868 ms 216.257 ms<br><br>So, from these few examples, you can see that network latency is<br>introduced in places 2,3,5,10 hops away from you that neither you nor
<br>your provider have any control over, nor hopes of fixing.<br><br>Now, what I came here to say: YOU CAN'T ASK THE QUESTION "HOW MANY<br>PLAYERS CAN I SUPPORT" AND EXPECT A REALISTIC ANSWER, assuming that you
<br>are talking about player experience, or people playing on a LAN.<br><br>BTW, I work for Internet Systems Consortium (<a href="http://www.isc.org/" target="_blank">www.isc.org</a>) on the BIND<br>and DHCP training and support team. We get questions all the time
<br>asking "how big a server do I need to serve X number of zones and to<br>support Y number of recursive clients... I CAN'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION<br>EITHER, and for mostly the same reasons.<br><br>Thanks for your time and patience in reading this entire e-mail.
<br><br>{and if you've actually read this far, please quit asking about sizing<br>servers, K? THX!}<br><br>AlanC<br><br></blockquote></div><br>