[bf1942] is this a normal amount of traffic for a BF server?

[Zachary Williams]

As owner of a gameserver provider, we've had to base our pricing, primarily
on bandwidth usage.

Our 'average' is 28kbits/player across all games (mostly UT).  The highest
being 32kbits/player, and the lowest about 22kbits/player.

Medal of Honor, trounces them at 48kbits/player, and BF1942 just wails on
that a bit as well.

I would say, that in the next few years, we will see an increase in
bandwidth utilization, as games become more involving, and more information
about surroundings need to be passed on.  Of course, over the next few
years, hopefully, bandwidth prices will keep a steady decline, and offset
the increase in usaage.  BF1942, sortof comes in early on this, and I'm
honestly uncertain as to why.

My personal (half educated) guess, is that the game is transferring
information on a very large radius around the player. Things such as a bomb
being dropped by a plane across the map, may get sent to all clients,
regardless of their location.  This could easily explain increased usage,
and would hopefully be a basis of 'trimming down'.

In addition, there is bandwidth limiting code in the windows server, and
reports of cutting it down to about 50kbits/player, and still keeping things
smooth and lag-free.  If that is the case, then hopefully the linux port
will include this as well, and that is an excellent solution.  The providers
can base pricing on a nice minimum amount needed for reasonable gameplay.
Those who have more bandwidth available to them, can use it, and if not,
they will still get a server that performs well.

My 2 cents.

Zach

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Kunz" <chris at de-punkt.de>
To: <bf1942 at icculus.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [bf1942] is this a normal amount of traffic for a BF server?


> Andrew A. Chen wrote:
> > Well, the linux server appears to mirror the windows server in bandwidth
> > usage, if what Christopher wrote is correct.  What he quotes is about
> > what I see on the 24 player servers I host on Windows.
>
> I was actually referring to a windows server. I am not aware of _any_
> game servers under Linux that act differently under Linux than under
> Windows, as for compatibility reasons, they'll probably use the same
> netcode on all available platforms.
> On a more abstract level, I'd have difficulties to understand why a
> Linux-based server should decrease the bandwidth usage. Clever packet
> compression algorithms would help accomplish that, but most probably
> increase the latency.
>
> Perhaps Ryan can enlighten us a bit? :)
>
> > HL servers can do much much more than 2GB per day when utilized all day.
>
> Yup. 30kbit per player are a good figure - that would sum up to 5.2gig
> per day on a 16 player server, if my calc.exe is not broken.
>
> --ck
>
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