This should be a pretty easy question to answer, atleast for David. The question is, with a start-up company, what kind of server would be needed to host a game server? I''m looking into maybe developing a small network game before I release my bigger project, and am wondering what kind of server and speed I would need. What kind of servers were used originally for PaintballNet? What is used now? Any information would be great, thanks. ~WarDekar

Without knowing anything about your actual server process, it''s hard to say.

We run on Linux/Unix servers (because our server software is written in ANSI C and because Unix is cool for that sort of thing). It also depends on the CPU and RAM requirements of your server. We typically use 300+ MHz CPUs with as much RAM as we can stuff in the server. For us, RAM is the important part. Our server processes don''t usually chew up much CPU or require a lot of hard drive space, but we do step on the RAM. For Paintball NET, a single game process takes about 20-40MB RAM depending on traffic. For Artifact, it''s 25-35MB RAM. So we can stuff about 8 game processes on a server with 256MB RAM.

We lease servers from these vendors:
http://www.inetsolve.com
http://www.mudservices.com


DavidRM
Samu Games

I didn''t see any setups like that on either one, did you have to work out a special deal with them? Also, they said they only host MUDs, or do they do any kind of on-line game? Also, what do you pay per server, and how many games/players does that hold total for you at any given time? Thanks for the info.

~WarDekar

On MudServices, where we lease our Paintball NET server, the specs on the server are a bit different...we''ve had that server for over 2 years now. It''s about a 200MHz CPU with 96MB RAM running RedHat Linux (I forget the RedHat version). (Speaking of which, I should probably just pay the setup fee again and have them upgrade the hardware; it''s getting a bit long in the tooth). We pay $165/month to lease the server.

On Inetsolve, our servers (we have 2 now, because our previous host for Artifact and samugames.com was acquired and dismantled; still in the painful process of moving, incidently) are treated as "co-locations". We pay $135/month per server, more if the bandwidth usage warrants it. I''ve been using Inetsolve for about a month now.

As for the specs I give not matching the ones they advertise, I just tell them what I want. It affects the setup fee, but not the monthly rate (after all, all they''re really charging for is the connection).

Also, in all cases I have made sure I queried them about exactly what I wanted to do *before* going any further with them. I told them the nature of the games, the kind of hardware I wanted, and estimates of bandwidth I would be using.

You have to be careful with some co-location setups, BTW. There was one place that was wanting to mark-up their bandwidth fees 2500% and charge me that. It seems they were accustomed to "bleeding" businesses who had *no* idea how much a T1 actually costs per month. I never received a reply to my email where I pointed out that horrendous mark-up they were wanting...

Inetsolve''s colocation fees are some of the most reasonable I''ve seen, and their connection is quite snappy. I recommend them.


DavidRM
Samu Games