Hosting my own Game Server from Home

[thecoroner]

I'm fairly interested in hosting a gaming server for myself from my house.

To host it, I was thinking of a setup similar to this except with 1 GB of RAM.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...tails.asp?EdpNo=1578194&Sku=H24-DC5000

For Internet, I was thinking of either 3 megs or 6 megs (hopefully it comes with a dedicated IP): http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index.html

What are the chances of me hosting a few 32 player servers on a machine like this? I was thinking of games such as Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R., or maybe Battlefield 2 if I get lucky.

For Internet, is 6 megs download and 512k upload enough? What is the recommended Internet speed?

I know there are some limitations to hosting game servers, but if I can host it myself it would be cool.

To make my point, hosting two 32 player game servers would be $128-$196 a month. After only around 3-5 months, I would have paid the price of the HP PC I linked to in hosting fees. I know I would still have to pay $50 or so a month for Internet, but I would still be saving money.

What do you think?

 

[Greenman]

I don't think you will be able to run more than 1 small server on 512 Kbps upload speed. Game servers need a lot of bandwidth.

 

[Cdubneeddeal]

You'll be lucky to host an 8 man server at best. LIke Greenman said, game servers require a lot of bandwith. More than a standard cable or DSL connect can put out.

 

[thecoroner]

Ok. As for the hardware, how well do you think that would work?

 

[pissclams]

You won't even be able to host an 8 man, trying hosting one person on your current box and see how the bandwidth reacts. But if I were you I would spend a ton on hardware trying to prove us all wrong.

 

[Twsmit]

I think the rule of thumb is between 8-10Kb per player up and down for modern gaming. 512KB upload would allow for a nice 8 man server, any more people than that and it will start to lag.

 

[Dravic]

Not going to work..

a 64 person bf2 server can take as much as 2.5Mbps

with latency over head of a home provider/ISP network, meaning the server wont lie on a backbone or co-location somewhere you will get lucky to serve a consistant lag free 8 person server with 512 upload.

You can pull in the data from all those players fine on a cable connection (3-6Mbps down), but the server must send everyone all the communcation at the same time on the upload (512 not nearly enough). Upload bandwidth is actually more consistant when running a game server.

think of it this way.. if 1 out of 8 players jump, you only get that one person to tell the server he jumped, but the server must then tell all 8 players player 1 jumped. usually everone on a server is doing something so the bandwidth is about the same up and down, but the upload will always be around the peak of the bandwidth needed for the amout of players being served as the server needs to relay everyones actions to everyone else.

CPU and memory wise server requirements aren't that bad, it more demanding of a bf2 client to play on a 64 peson server, then to host a 64 player server. The cost is in the excessive bandwidth needed, and the rack space at a co-location.