good server hardware?

[flight]

hello,

any hosting that i do do, i do on a relatively fast computer and connection. 2 GHZ, 1.5 GB, and FIOS hardwired connection. i was wondering what things REALLY matter when it comes to hosting maps. is it GHZ? RAM? mainly just the connection?

if i got a 1.66 GHZ mac mini with 512 MB hardwired FIOS connection, would that work well for hosting? what other hardware requirements should i meet?

goodbye

[L4m3r]

Hardware is not much of an issue. BZFS is an extremely low-demand program.

But yes, what you DO need is a decent connection... more specifically, a good upstream. Your bandwidth consumption increases quadratically as a function of the number of players, and is also influenced by things like the number of shots, flags, etc.

On average, a decent home connection can host anywhere fro 6~12 players without getting too laggy. I don't know how a FIOS connection's upstream stacks up against other forms of broadband, so YMMV.

[optic delusion]

A graph from the mofo machine. It's a 2.53 Ghz celeron at a dedicated host. XLhost.
You'll notice that our CPU usage rarely raises beyond 10 percent, and is usually less than 5. The places where it does spike, are when the machine is used for something other than bzflag. (Which isn't very often.) Your PC will be running other applications of course, that is why many home servers use old, really old hardware to run the server, and keep your nice machine for real work. I'd say a mac mini is perfect.

The big spike is disk usage during a daily backup.





The bandwidth graph is a completely different story. Much Usage!
my guess is during the highest peaks we have 70+ players connected.
This is not a high-traffic day.

[neutronix7]

Any decent dedicated Pentium3/equivliant server will work. Even 128MB of RAM will work fine in my experience. Network bw is the real issue though.

[anomaly]

FIOS is FTTP, fiber to the premises. The broadband over FIOS is essentially the same as ADSL or cable. That 512MB doesn't sound right. Thats like an OC12. Most DSLAMS don't have that kind of a connection much less going to one residence.

What is the downstream/upstream bandwidth you pay for? As has been stated in the previous posts, bandwidth is the key.

Verizon FIOS offers upto 30Mb downstream and 5Mb upstream. The upstream is the one to look at. That will determine your overall server bandwidth. Btw 5Mb upstream is way fast. That would be a nice connection!

[Macrosoft]

Hardware is not much of an issue. BZFS is an extremely low-demand program.

...for now.

the devs plan on eventually having most things handled server-side to prevent cheating and stuff like that.

[blast]

Hardware is not much of an issue. BZFS is an extremely low-demand program.

...for now.

the devs plan on eventually having most things handled server-side to prevent cheating and stuff like that.

And adding that stuff will not make bzfs take that much more power. People don't seem to realize that 99% of the client's CPU time is spent drawing crap on the screen. Oh no, bzfs will take another 1% of the CPU for some extra cheat detection. Call the news agencies!!