Hello, I have a question I really hope someone can help me on. I wish to create a client/server type game. I want to use only 1 server machine for this. I need some advice on how many users I can have logged on at once. Here are some specifics... * Client/Server based using TCP/IP (I won''t be using UDP) * Almost a turn based game, the chat will most likely be the most amount of information sent in the game. Kind of like a MUD perhaps. * The player turns are not complex so the server processor should not be over loaded * I am reducing all game interaction to the lowest activity as possible. * I am even breaking up the max number of players in a room at once to maybe 10 to really cut down on server load. * The bottom line is that I am making the game very light. ...The bandwidth usage will be very low and turn processing should be light as well. Aside from that I am fairly new to network programming so I do not know if there are any hiddin things in Windows, Limits I don''t know about etc etc. or anything else outside of bandwidth and processor usage so this is why I''m asking for the folowing advice... ** What''s the most number of users you think I can get away with reliably on a single server?? it will be a 2.5 GHZ Machine with 2 Gigs of RAM. I own all Windows versions so if you can recommend a specific Windows operating system it will be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks very much.

Windows? 500. Maybe 1000.

A custom-built BSD kernel? 2500 or so.

It really does depend on how much processing your doing. but a well written windows server, using IOCP can easily support 5000+ players with limited processing.
Again a custom unix build can probably achieve the same. But I''m no unix expert thats just observations by me.

I have some windows server apps that can handle 10,000 simultaneous connections and are quite happy other max out around 3000, it really does all depend on what you do with the data and how much time it takes.

I suggest taking a look at Network programming for microsoft windows, by microsoft press, Assuming your using windows. It will tell you exactly what limits windows imposes on the various socket methods, and typcial throughputs etc.. It also is an excellent guide on how to program winsock

Thanks very much for the replies. I was guessing 500 so I wasn''t
too far off. I will be using Windows for this. Which version of
Windows I''m not sure of yet. Since there is very little traffic
and processing that is going to happen, I hope to get 1000
users on at once. Thanks again.