HOME Im in the market for a site that I can host OFP on to play missions. Any recommendations. Prefer West Coast USA. thanks.
Im in the market for a site that I can host OFP on to play missions. Any recommendations. Prefer West Coast USA. thanks.
#2
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.
And where is that band that so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country shall leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
(3rd stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner)
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
I'd recommend a root server with lots of traffic. Those are cheaper than gameservers and allow more flexibility.
#5
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.
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.
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
[im]http://www.roughnecks.org/malboeuf/pissonTKC.gif[/img] >100kb
Roughneck Whore House - rn1.roughnecks.org
AMD 64x2 4400 2200@2450 Mhz- 2 gig dual DDR PC4000 - SATA HDs
#8
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.
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 goldOriginally Posted by (gunterlund @ Jan. 05 2005,17:02)
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
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
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