Looking for recommendations for game hosting

[gunterlund 0]

Im in the market for a site that I can host OFP on to play missions. Any recommendations. Prefer West Coast USA. thanks.

[shinRaiden 0]

Locating the server on the west coast does not guarantee superior performance over servers located in more competitive markets like Dallas, Chicago, or the Northeast.

For example, if I traceroute the 14 hops from my DSL modem through Seattle to Blackdog's Tacticalblunder on Tomsyer.net in Fort Worth, TX, the first 8 hops are still in the Seattle metro area, and the first 7 are at the house, local ISP, and metropolitan ISP. Hops 9 and 10 are cross-metro, and 11-14 are inside the data center.

This gives about a 10~20 ms ping advantage to me as there is a direct backbone link between Seattle and Dallas on Savvis. When Blackdog had his server previously on Ev1servers, the preferred backbone between here and there had an additional hop in Chicago, adding ping and lag.

There's nothing you can do about the backbones, those are switched on metrics decided by the Telco's. What you can do is run a battery of traceroutes to get a feel for your ISP's connections and upstream metro providers. From there, look for datacenters that use the same backbone providers, and do traceroutes against their sites using samples from Netcraft.

The next problem you're going to have is who's going to be connecting. Basing the server on the west coast could theoretically enhance your connection, although you would likely only have a single hop anyway from Portland to LA or SanFran, as you could to Dallas or Chicago etc., but would significantly impact foriegn connections, especially from Europe. You would probably have at least two hops before hitting the international demarcation points, and in any case would not be able to get as internationally friendly a location network-wise on the west coast.

For an example of that, grab a bunch of server IP's from OFPwatch and traceroute them to see where the hop bottlenecks are. That can also help you position your server to maximize the gaming potential.

[venmaster 0]

I highly recommend BTL Servers for OFP server host.  They are centrally located in Texas and my team gets good pings from both the west and east coast. They have great support and can also provide teamspeak and webhosting services.  I have used them for more than a year and couldnt be happier about service and price.

Stalker

[benu 1]

I'd recommend a root server with lots of traffic. Those are cheaper than gameservers and allow more flexibility.

[shinRaiden 0]

Tracerouting to BTL yields more interesting data. While my local ISP and BTL use the same backbone provider (Alter.net, now owned and operated by MCI Worldcom), it still 'costs' 14 hops and ~120ms from here to there. So in that case, it comes down to the server offerings and support.

[gunterlund 0]

Wow Im finding there isnt a huge market for hosting OFP. Everyone want COD, AA, CS, DOD.... all of the low bandwidth games. Imagine that..thanks for the info all. If anyone else has suggestions of providers, Im all ears.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

naaa dont listen to these guys

the two most used CTI servers are on the west cost

ours be the best suited for CTI

check out www.calpop.com

they are cheaper then the rest and the service it the best i have ever seen

all the techs are linked to thier cell phones on thier toll free number and service or reboots have never taken longer then 15 minutes, most other companies can tak hours and some time DAYS

ping our server

rn1.roughnecks.org

she is in down town LA and is the best of the best, UK and Asian players also use it the most for league stuff since there is less lag for them compared to any other NA server

we have run OFP servers for 3 years now, not many others have tested as many servers as we have, so we know what we are talking about

[shinRaiden 0]

Now here's some actually useful information, rather than just rechewed cud...

Calpop has a much flatter network than other large colo's and server farms, they take 2 hops where tomsyer and others take 3-4. If you had 12 hops to Sri Lanka or Beirut on the same grade line it would be better compared to 14 hops to next door. This is why you'd see a significant advantage at calpop over Tomsyer, and not from the geophysical location. The only time that physical location makes a difference is if your server is on the Moon or Mars. That said, if you want to talk to Europe, your odds of a EU-optimum are still going to be east, because that is where the trans-Atlantic trunks are.

However, this is my results from my tracert run from my connection. Your milage will vary, as will the telco's interconnects. I get 12 hops to calpop, and that's with switching backbones here in Seattle. If I coulld connect on the same backbone, I think one, maybe two hops could get dropped. My suggestion is have folks from around the world ping and tracert to the various farms you're considering, and see how that averages out.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

Wow Im finding there isnt a huge market for hosting OFP. Everyone want COD, AA, CS, DOD.... all of the low bandwidth games. Imagine that..thanks for the info all. If anyone else has suggestions of providers, Im all ears.

calpop offers 1.5 teribytes (1500 gigs) an ofp server will use 50-100 gigs per month - ours is 250+ since it's used alot plus FTP stuff we run off of it - so to us in RN it's worth it's weight in gold

we have three servers by the way but on three different server compaines for different reasons 1 boston based one for our FL div, 1 linux based web server for our hundreds or so web sites RN hosts and the OFP whore house running 4.0 ghz, shes our toy

it's simple if you can afford to spend $100-125 US a month on a server go for Calpop, but if you cant i would suggest BTL servers for lower end machines and costs

Dont settle on a shared machine tho if you can unless it has FireDeamon (it makes OFP run as a service - it becomes apart of windows making it better in many ways) running the OFP as a service binded to 1 CPU

having OFP move from 1 CPU to the other like Linux does on multi proc servers will cause dysync (caused by CPU lag) in large CTI matches over a period of 40 minutes no matter how fast the server is (this is based on actual Tests we did on a Dual Zeon 2.8 ghz HT) but if you are playing regular games you will be fine

also a few more tips if you plan on it playing CTI

512megs to 1 gig Dual Ram , and the more FSB the better, dont settle for 400 mhz, 800 is a must

dont opt for lower end 64bit AMD servers, they wont do, you will need the more powerful ones and they simply cost way to much so that leaves the cheap 3.0s with HT

min 5 mbit line more if you need Ftp or TS ect

as for ping/ms connected to the server, if you are any where near 175 ms to any OFP server you are ok as long as the server has a good line, so dont worry about hops thats all pointless when it comes to the power of the CPU the server has

you can have a ping of 5 ms, and if you have a 2.4 ghz for CPU it will lag like a bitch for CTI since the server is choking

if its just Co-Op or CTF use the BTL servers

[RN Malboeuf 12]

ohh almost forgot, once you get the server you will need to put OFP onto it, we have a FTP for this off the whore, she is mother to atleast 13 other servers (hence her name) since its faster to xfer from server to server then it is from home to server, takes 3-40 mins depending on where the other server is, this beats 5-12 hours of upload from home, we even have a folder with installables (firewalls, netlogs, server tweaks firedeamon) folder for windows to help maintain a server

[gunterlund 0]

Thanks everyone for the info. I bit the bullet and went with BTL for now. So far Im happy with the ping I am getting. Venmaster, any chance you can share cfg settings for server, flashpoint, and user. Also when you load a server to all addons go into the Res/addons directory or can you use the -mod command with a server exe . What does your bat file look like. Thanks for the help all.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

we dont use the bat file we load OFP with Firedeamon

as for mod folder set ups you can use this link (its also used for dloading addons for players who need a quick fix)

http://roughnecks.org/ofp2....artid=4

you will see in the addons folder we do not keep any 1.46 mods in the folder since the server will load them, in stead we throw addons we use alot into it and keep the res folder clean

add or Adjust the following setttings

server.cfg

passwordAdmin="*****";

//password="***";

hostname="Your server name here";

maxPlayers=32;

voteThreshold=0.58;

voteMissionPlayer=1;

kickduplicate=1;

users/PLAYER-SYSTEMNAME/userinfo.cfg

frameRate=15.000000;

visualQuality=0.093750;

objectShadows=0;

vehicleShadows=1;

cloudlets=1;

viewDistance=900.000000;

terrainGrid=25.000000;

volumeCD=5.000000;

volumeFX=5.000000;

volumeSpeech=5.000000;

singleVoice=0;

enableEAX=0;

enableHW=0;

diffArmor[]={0,0};

diffFriendlyTag[]={0,0};

diffEnemyTag[]={0,0};

diffHUD[]={1,0};

diffAutoSpot[]={0,0};

diffMap[]={1,0};

diffWeaponCursor[]={1,1};

diffAutoGuideAT[]={0,0};

diffClockIndicator[]={0,0};

diff3rdPersonView[]={1,0};

diffTracers[]={0,1};

diffUltraAI[]={0,0};

the the following settins we need your CPU speed, Line Speed

MaxMsgSend=

MaxSizeGuaranteed=

MaxSizeNonguaranteed=

MinBandwidth=

MaxBandwidth=

[gunterlund 0]

So in my ofpr_server.bat file can I put in a line that looks like this

OFPR_Server.exe -config=sample.cfg -mod=wgl

Will this work

also on the difficulty settings  the two values...{1,1} what do they mean. Is this cadet and veteran

[RN Malboeuf 12]

OFPR_Server.exe -config=sample.cfg -mod=wgl

is fine

1,1 is corect

ours is set for league play, this means cadet it 3rd and vet is 1st person only

this way you can chose between the two in game

most server use it

[venmaster 0]

As far as the mod folders go.  Create seperate mod folders and put the addons in there - BAS, WGL, etc.  Leave the RES folder alone. BTL can create a control panel for you that will allow you to rotate and run any single or multiple mod folders you want.  You can change them on the fly, its really simple.  Hit me up on MSN if you want - empirestatejoe@hotmail.com .

[gunterlund 0]

Ven

My server is down and no one is getting back to me at BTL... Any ideas on how to get it running. thanks for your thoughts.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

15 minute service at Calpop wooot

[gunterlund 0]

$125.... ugh

[venmaster 0]

did you use the server restart control panel?

[gunterlund 0]

Ven I got ahold of Brag and we are back in action. thanks for all of your help.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

$125.... ugh

what server did you pick up at BTL?

I know none of thier machines are fast enough for what we need, if you look at thier top machine its still only a few dollars less and is no where comparable to a full bore access 3.0 that is all yours and not shared

[gunterlund 0]

Hi RN

I didnt mean to denagrate the Service provider you have. This is my first outside service I have used for ofp and my main concern to start was price. I only play with perhaps 4 to 5 players on a private server so at this time Im not expecting a big crowd to play like the roughnecks do. If things work out perhaps Ill look at your service down the road. Thanks for your input though, it is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[gunterlund 0]

Just a quick update on our dedi. server. After about a week of setup and getting the right combination of addons our server is running great. We get consistent pings for every player and the ability to change addon combinations is great. The biggest issue we had is finding the right combination of addons that can work on a dedi server.

Big thanks to Stalker for the recommendation of BTL, Killswitch who spent several hours debugging our setup, Jinef, and bn880 for making killer missions for dedi server (the CoCAI and CoCNS are working very well), and Brag for his patience with me on the server. Also thanks to the guys at www.ofp-zeus.com for a great site with tons of info and downloads for getting a server up and running. Oops also thanks to RN Malboeuf for providing his setup at the roughnecks.

[RN Malboeuf 12]

we set up 88th on Calpop, it took 2 mins to xfer the ofp load over and the server was running 100% 5 mins after that, thats 7 mins, i think you guys are starting off on the wrong foot

debugging a server? wow

any ways we rent from calpop, it took us 7 years to find the service every one demands, this is what i was pushing, our experience in OFP servers and other servers far exceeds any other squad, I can be a little strong flavored, but hey

im a madcow