OK I'm not really sure if this is the correct place for this post, so if it is incorrectly placed I'm sorry. Anyways I am looking like the other 300 posts in here to start my own company also. I have more experience playing the actualy games then running them unfortunately.
Due to being involved with games for so long I have pretty good connections in the "eworld". I know that if I were to start a game server hosting company I would have a lot of clientell from the start. I basically have a few questions, and then I'd like someone in here to point me to a guide or a book where I can learn the rest.
So from reading on here it seems most people rent their servers, and sell the space they rented. Can you buy your own server, then run your own connection and sell that space? Or is that much harder? The reason being is because my brother lives in Atlanta and has a T1 line at his house, so I figured I could start that off as my first location. If you want to expand your hosting sites to different cities, do you rent space and put your own box there? Or do you rent space from a company that already exists in that city? Also I was wondering is it really necessary to have a T1 line...or can I host space using a simple cable connection?
Well I know I'm going to need a website, but I got that part covered thanks to my friend James. Next I need to learn how to upload these games to the servers, primarily steam applications, but also teamspeak and ventrilo. Does anyone know of a good guide that takes you through the process? Also when it comes to payment, how do you setup a credit card payment interface? I know from reading that you can setup a game server interface in place of using FTP, but it seems that you can just download that. I'm curious as to how you accept credit card payments, I would think you would need some sort of licence to accept a payment of that type.
I guess thats it for now, I just want to get my feet in the water and start to learn what I can. I don't plan on starting it anytime soon, maybe next winter because I want to make sure I'm prepared. I know I am an extreme beginner here so if someone could point me to a good site, or a good read it would be greatly appreciated.

-Brad

If you think you'll have a good clientel I don't see why you cannot afford a dedicated system administration to help you get on your feet and keep things running smoothly. You can generally find semi decent guides on google.

You can buy equipment and colocate it but I don't think a T-1 is enough to get started . The newer games like bf2 just suck up bandwidth like theres no tomorrow. You'll find that hosting is an economy of scale. Leasing dedicated servers from a datacenter will be much cheaper at the start and eventually you'll hit a point when using your own hardware is cost effective. Bandiwdth gets cheaper per unit as you agree to buy more per month (purchase a larger commit).

A cable connection isn't good enough. Remember that the only number that matters is the upload speed which is usually 512 kbps on cable. Well actually download speed matters too but since the connection is going to flow both ways your major cap will be upload.

As for payment you can start with a third party merchant like paypal and then upgrade to your own merchant gateway from authorize.net . This won't become more cost effective until you start processing a couple thousand per month.

I see so you lease the equipment from a company that also provides you with a good connection. It seems to me that you are going to be losing money from the start this way, if I have the money should I not simply buy my own equipment? If I do buy my own equipment, what companies do provide the right connection or bandwidth required? Thanks for your reply!

-Brad

Heres a typical price schedule for premium bandwidth:

* notice the per so the 1-5 tier would cost 450 per month if using 5 mbps
* this also excludes the cost of power and rackspace for the equipment

* schedule from steadfast networks premium network

1-5 Mbit/sec - $90 per Mbit/sec
5-10 Mbit/sec - $75 per Mbit/sec
10-20 Mbit/sec - $65 per Mbit/sec
20-50 Mbit/sec - $55 per Mbit/sec
50-100 Mbit/sec - $45 per Mbit/sec
100+ Mbit/sec - $40 per Mbit/sec

* more expensive schedule from gnax

1 $99.00
10 $79.00
20 $59.00
50 $49.00

Of course you can use a middleman and sometimes get a better deal but then you have space issues and things can get ugly.

Hello,

For running a game server you need a good datacenter which provides you a good server with good configuration and with good support.

The server configuration has to be on a higher side since you are hosting a gaming server.

Game servers has the most highly hit servers which consumes lots of bandwidth since there will lots of people through the world connected to your server.

Also you need to take care of the datacenter center network whether they get jammed due to your server.

There are many factors which you should consider before getting into the game server hosting.

Thank you.

Regards,

Pixelized do you have AIM or any other messanger? If you don't mind I'd like to ask you some questions on a messanger so it will be less time consuming for both of us.

-Brad

BW is not the only thing to look at. Location means a hell of a lot it really does. Packet routing can cause players to leave and go elsewhere.

We had our own game servers. Then housed them in telehouse in the UK where the connection to the UK backbone and Europe was excellant. That cost us £40/month ($60) per server.

Every week we had players sending us traceroutes from their conns to our servers because they were getting dropped packets. We were then able to inform the ISP to sort their routing out or help them configure their systems better!

Providing a gaming server will take up more time than providing a web hosting server and it far more technical so make sure you have the skillz on hand asap when you need them.