How do you set up a net server.

El_Presidente

Just out of curiosity, how do you go about setting up a dedicated net server with an ISP?

Is it expensive?

Are the ISP's helpful?

Is it hard to maintain?

Just in case im ever seriously wealthy and decide to set up a server.

Gerry

The ISP's might not like you soaking up bandwidth from their precious customers, oh no wait they dont give a ****e cos they're already overloaded and they are owned by phone companies so as long as we keep dialling up and getting ****e connections and getting disconnected its money for them. So give them a ring and I'm sure they'll be very helpful.

ButcherOfNog

Esat --> 4500 a yr for hosting a server, no limit on bandwidth for first yr, the server will be sitting on a 10mb line.

off you go lads, gl

regi

Heh Nog...
At least its not as costly as it used to be...

Gerry

Well if everybody contributed and we had some sponsorship it doesn't look too far fetched. But no lets just sit here and play on crappy modems

El_Presidente

So when slosh set up those servers on Indigo a while back he was forking out 4 and a half grand?

The Anarchist

£4500 quid hmm..........

The Anarchist

nah

F U C K IT!

ButcherOfNog

am not sure what arrangements slosh came to with indigo for that, i doubt it was a business hosting arrangement.

WhiteWashMan

actually what i meant was starting a new internet service provider....
in about 6 months time, someone will buy you for about 5 times its worth and you are a millionaire in 6 months.
and this is my idea so no-one is to nick it or there shall be legal issues abound....
unless you offer me a 2 percent share in the company and a job

Sonic

hehehe ill buy a bank of modems and hijack our t1 line , subscription fees hmmm

SheroN

£4500 thats a lot of cash....approx....1800 pints of fine beer....is such a price worth while?

El_Presidente

Well, what I really want to know is, is it poisible (if the approprate funds could be obtained) to get a set up where we could directly dial into to server running Q3?

If it were, would it give better pings and more stable pings for modemers?

Sonic

so ur talking about our very own version of barrysworld nice one

DeVore

yes and then the birds can come and tie ribbons in our hair and robots will do all our work while we live under the sea, under the sea, there'll be no accusations, just friendly crustations, under the sea....


Dialup model:
30 ish modems (we all want a go right? reduce busy tones...pace of course) 3,000 quid

Servers (probably two or three) minimum 700 quid a piece, say £1,400

Employees? Whose going to admin the boxes, whose going to make sure machines are up?
Are you going to be happy *paying* for a service thats not always up?

Whose house/office will they be put in?
How much money are you willing to spend a month on thsi service? How will it be authenticated (whats to stop someone giving access to their mates and mate's mates.)

So many wonderful ideas, such little thought.

DeV.

WhiteWashMan

hmmm, maybe we could set up our own company?
theres food for thought.......

WhiteWashMan

plans come from ideas........
thought comes after the initial 'can we actually do this' stage.
dont knock it dev.
it could actually be worth putting some 'thought' into..unless youre ahead of the posse and trying to use reverse psychology to make us give up this idea

Gerry

I think it would be a great idea.

DeVore

I have thought of this but its pretty unworkable. Barrysworld barely works and it has a better telecoms infrastructure to work from and a considerably larger gaming population.

I forgot to include the 30 phone lines you need to support the 30 modems. Line rental etc. Gets pretty pricey pretty fast.

My estimates are that we'd need to be talking about 100 people x 30-50 quid a month, giving 3-5,000 a month and thats optimisitic.

The other route to go is hosted by an ISP as we are at the moment but with a service contract presigned. This is possible but they have to carry the bandwidth charges then and gamers eat bandwidth as we all know.
Whats in it for them? a core group of people who login via free dialups and hog their modems and chew bandwidth? They also invite the sort of 16-year-old with hormone problems that we see here. Wheres the money in it for them? Seems like a lot of pain for fnck all back. Thats why IOL and Indigo decided it was just less hassle to pull the plug.

I'm talking to one crowd who might be up for providing game servers, but we'll have to see. I think the pay-to-play model could work in that we could put some cash towards the admins who look after the boxes (remember I'm not one of those people) to at least say thanks in some way.

People like Mr Bond using bots and impersonating others (he took musician's nick tonight ) and abusing admins are just ignorant. Perhaps charging a small fee would rid us of the childishness at the same time as buying a few pints for Slosh Cloud and Regi.

DeV.


[This message has been edited by DeVore (edited 11-02-2000).]

Gerry

Just a few thoughts,
If pace modems cost £100 when you buy in bulk that doesn't look like a good option. Why not get good modems that are less expensive. Good hardware modems can be had for half that price. Do ISP's use pace modems? And will there be other phone companies putting in lines soon for cheaper? Also I think that more than 100 people would use the service as it would be easier to get into online gaming if your ping was reasonable. People starting now have a fairly rough time with 300 - 400 pings to the ign server. I think with enough effort, the price could be reduced to an acceptable level. People could go splits on their subscription if need be because you wouldn't be playing every night. I would be prepared to give time and effort to this and I think there are a few other as well. Or else we can all go fork out for ISDN and be stuck with that. Thats just my opinion.

SCRUB

I have a better idea ... why dont we all get together , have a big game of Diakatana then go in to cable management or cable link or whoever and start shooting the place up chanting for cable modems .

And when we get caught blame it on Diakatana. and the fact that bad pings ****ed us off .

Gerry

That is such a good idea. But we would need to stock up on bfg ammo and ra before mounting an assault

Excelsior

I mean its clear. De Vore is against the idea- what are we waiting for?!?

DeVore

Its DeVore! I capitalised the V because many americans thought it was the Irish spelling of Deborrah. Its nothing to do with the Vore creature in Quake, its a character from a book called Chung Quo

Hey dont look at me like that, its friday afternoon after a long week...

Tom.

El_Presidente

Ok Dev they are all very good points...

But lets just say I have big bundle of money in my off-shore account which I want to spend before the revenue commission comes to get me.

I set up my bank of modems in my Garage and have 30 phone lines coming into my house. I also have a cutting edge server on which to run Q3.

Now, my friend, lets just call him mister X living just down the road dials into my little server on a mormal 56K modem.

What ping would he get?

Would the connection be considerabley more stable then the current connection mister X gets from the IGN servers?

DeVore

The connection stability depends on where Mr X lives now.

If hes a country person and playing in dublin then he will get a better connection to your machine since he only goes as far as the local exchange (rather then several exchange hops up to dublin).
The difference wont be that great tho, and will be greatly affected by the modems you use.

The server may well feel better if its the only thing on the machine and you have a horse of a box.

If its just for you and your mate to play on then this model works ok because you can afford to fork out the cash for one person, 30 people is a different thing.

His connection is unlikely to be more "stable" in that you will still experience drops and packetloss. It wouldnt be worse then dialup. I guess it might be a little better.

The only real difference between that and an ISP is that the ISP is far away (more exhange hops) and that introduces line noise and latency issues. Other then that , all they have is a modem and computers (with routers in between to handle so many people).

DeV.

H_K

but ahh now dev there are devores in star trek, theyve mad goatees too

Gavin

As I recall, a year or 2 ago, conor mcgoveran was saying that tinet were researching into this idea ? In reality the only peopl ethat could realistacly do it in Ireland would be an ISP, and they aren't going to really give it ago with the possibility of maybe getting 100 or so people. It's a nice idea but totally unrealistic

Gav

sutty

if you want to get a good ping of an isp, try and hound them about getting adsl up and runing on the irish servers or for this server idea of elpres you could try to connect two adsl modems up to the game server and dial up a isp in America (you could try to cut a deal with the phone company, to try lower the phone bill) you sould still get a better ping than with the irish isp.
(not the best of ideas but I'm all out of any good ones.

sutty

if you want to get a good ping off an isp, try and hound them about getting adsl up and running on the Irish servers or for this server idea of elpres you could try to connect two adsl modems up to the game server and dial up a isp in America (you could try to cut a deal with the phone company, to try lower the phone bill) you should still get a better ping than with the Irish isp.
(not the best of ideas but I'm all out of any good ones.