Alright, I want to host Game Servers using my T1 line. The thing is I don’t know what kind of computer system I need and what kind of hardware I will need and software. Could anyone help me?

First decide which game(s) you want to host!

couterstrike will be one of them

figure a HLDS (Half-life dedicated server) will eat ~250 megs of ram and atleast 1 mbit of bandwith per 20 players. The processor is then the key, and the more power you can get, the better off you will be in any case. I highly suggest avoiding celerons, and would go with a Xeon/Opteron if you can afford it, failing that, a high end P4. If you knwo hwo to adiministrate linux, that would be the best OS in this case, I would personally use Centos or Slackware

Windows has proven to be a very good OS for game servers, easy to update, manage and provides slightly better pings.

I second using a high end P4/Athlon64 or Xeon/Opteron.

- eddy

Whatever you do, don't let people tell you that running it without a panel for your customers is easy. BUY A PANEL! It makes it a lot more worth it since you won't spend 8 hours a day restarting servers for clients, when they can do it themselves.

Just my $0.02 based on experience.

I've had customers run HLDS on PIII-1ghz boxes and they've been pretty happy.
If you're gonna go for it, get yourself a nice fast athlon, they don't cost a lot either.
I've had loads of success running Linux gameservers in FreeBSD with Linux emulation, it saves a lot of hassles but its not necesarily for the noob.

Do you think Gentoo will work as well as Centos, Windows, if not better? What is the license fee for hosting a game, say Warcraft III or Unreal Tournament 2004? The fee is per server unit or per number of players? Thanks!

Originally posted by BlazerNetwork.com
Do you think Gentoo will work as well as Centos, Windows, if not better?

If you're gonna do Gentoo, you might as well just do FreeBSD...

Originally posted by RefreshNet
Whatever you do, don't let people tell you that running it without a panel for your customers is easy. BUY A PANEL! It makes it a lot more worth it since you won't spend 8 hours a day restarting servers for clients, when they can do it themselves.

Just my $0.02 based on experience.

That would be some great advice.. IF there were any *decent* universal control panels that work on the different platforms.

No you are wrong about the Bandwidth. CS slots are 12kb/sec per CS slot. You can IM me at AHSupport if you need any help at all setting up an HLDS, I have been running one for 3 years.