My Emu
 

I am new new, but have been reading and searching around a bit and have found some answers, but anything specific to my questions. I would appreciate any help and positive feedback I can receive.

1)I have 2.5+ amd with 1.5gig ram, 160 sata2 hd, winxp home, 7800gt, on comcast internet. How many zones, and how many accounts do you think I could handle if I set this computer to be a server and play a account on it at the same time(over internet not lan).

2)When I get back home in a couple months I have fiber optic 10up/10dwn(slower through my router, yet to figure out why). I may be able to set a computer close to same specs just for the server. How many zones, and how many accounts do you think I could handle?

3)if I wanted to run 100+ (not that I have that many friends) what would I need for server, and broadband to support it?

I am sorry if this is all posted somewhere else, like I said I been reading have seen tons of helpful information just nothing that answered specific information.

Im not 100% sure, but for

1.) Processor and Ram are fine. XP works, but not as stable as Linux, Comcast Cable is very picky at times so your Upload Limit may be funny (READ BOTTOM).

2.)FiOS is great for this because of the HIGH upload rate. ALSO READ BOTTOM

3.)100+ you would need at least 2GB of ram for all the zones that would be loaded at any given time. (READ BOTTOM)

(BOTTOM)

Internet connections are the key in all servers. You can have great hardware, but you have to move that information.

I think the rule of thumb was 5 Kbytes per player. So 20 people = 100Kbytes, or 100 people = 500Kbytes. This is your Upload rate, as you send more information to the clients then your server receives. Note that this is Kilobytes, not bits as network/internet connections are measured. After the math is done, I simple way to put this is that you take your internet connection and divide by 10 (I know thats not exact, but it gives a rough estimate.) My home DSL is 1.5/512, so I get roughly 150Kbytes down, and 50Kbytes up. I could in theroy hold around 10 people without lag, but that doesnt leave any room for error.

Hope this helps.

Disclaimer - The internet connection thing is a lamens way of defining what can be done theoretically. Its not fact, but it works on the fly to get a rough idea as to what you can do.

The 512kbit DL is 64kbytes, so a max of 64/5= 8-12 people.

On my connection, 768kbit would do about 20 people. I would have a hard time believing I would even get 1/2 that at any one time on my server due to interest or due to the amount of servers out there.

Your PC should have up to 4Gigs DDR2 if possible (under XP)

GeorgeS

Thanks`
 

Awesome thanks so much for the feedback. I probably have about 10 or so RL friends that are retired that expressed interest in checking it out but at the current time I don't think I am going to try and host it over the internet I might try and make it as stable as possible over the lan till I get back home though.

Dreaming
 

What I would really like to do is take some of EQ add a little of shadowbane and then through in some eq2 lol. I am so interested in this stuff right now though I am actually considering maybe going to school to do it. I been looking online to see if there are any programs that are simple stupid to make my own world and just place pre-made graphics and characters and combat system they way I want it laid out but haven't seen anything close.

btw I read your pdf techguy very nice. I am going to follow it word for word when I decide to tackle this.

Well, I got 50, because every broadband service I have ever used is funny. I can hit 64 at times, but its never always there. Nothing else is sucking up bandwidth. Mine is normally always at 50 or so. Uploading to sites, torrents ect.

Man I would kill for that FiOS.

Well my cable is 50 up, does that mean 50/10=5, meaning i can have 1 person on my server at once? i don't think so.

What do you mean moydock. Is yours 50Mbit up, or do you have 50Kbit up, or are you taking about like mine, 50Kbyte up. Anything over dial up can hold more than one player

GuildWars had ~180 players on a 1.5mb up line, spread across multiple servers. I would highly recommend if you plan on having that many players to use more than 1 box.

On a side note as i've said before, the 5kb/s per client thing is waay of, UNLESS someone broke packet combines, and packet compression. I should be as little as 2-3kb/s per client really and probably even less.

I've had up to 12 players on my server, blowing stuff up for hours, and aside from the old reposte zone crashes we used to get, I never saw a blip in my utilization. I was on Cox at the time, so you know 492 people in a 50 mile radius were probably all going through one switch - stingy pricks.

I "supposedly" have thie vDSL now - talking likr 52mb down. I have yet to see a download rate that even comes close to that... so I think all these providers are full of shit. Best way to tell is to just run it. If/when you run out of bandwidth, upgrade. They'll love taking more money, believe me.

I went off someone else saying 5kb per person. I have never really dove into this to confirm it, or find a accurate measure. That would seem about right though 1.5 up would hold around 150 at 5 per person, if you got 180 then 2-3 seems more right.

The moral of this story is, dont get that cheap old 19.99 month internet. Unless your unpopular and nobody plays with you, shoot for good broadband.

The EQ client is limited to 5k (like the max rate on a 28.8kbps modem line), unless you edit your datarate.txt to set it to a maximum of 10k. 'Back in da' day' I used to play EQ on dialup, and then switched to something better later, and the hard-cap was still there.

Yeah if you were able to hold 180 players on a 1.5mb line then that would mean, 1.5mb=1500kbps=187.5 KB/s, so that's a tiny bit over 1 KB/s per person. That's pretty damn low, i guess you have to factor in that many were afk and or boxed...

Btw, how does one get a hold of a 1.5mb upload? Can DSL lines get up there or is that a service?

Vdsl was what guildwars was run on at the time. My home line atm is Fios I have 30/15mb connection.

omfg i hate u.

;)

I'm thinking of going for business class Cox, which I think is 7m/768k. At least it'll be static.