: Hosting a public dedicated game server with user authentication I am basically looking for a cheap hosting provider to host a Call of Duty game server in India. But this is not a localized

@Looi9037786

It seems most things were already mentioned by @ollybee .

But I thought I would put my 2 cents in based on my experience. I used to manage dozen game servers in the past and with FPS, latency is unfortunately a major issue.

I'm afraid @Arjun Bajaj's suggestion to use cloud hosting/CDNs is not really suitable in your case. Hosting inside a cloud is good for reliability, scaling and the like, but not for things like gaming. What you want is a dedicated server (in the short term a VPS should suit you well too) that has a decent connection (from the perspective of your players) and enough hardware juice to support your game/player load combination.

I don't know CoD specifics but for Half-Life Dedicated Servers we used a rough estimate of 20 MB of RAM and 50 MHz of CPU speed per slot. I doubt CoD 1/2 is much more demanding.

As long as you have enough processing power, the game quality is strictly limited by the connection between the server and the players.



Things you should look at are:


raw latency (ping)
packet loss/reliability
variations in latency (ping spikes), routing issues etc.


Basically what you want is a strong server with enough uplink. If it's a serious data center this shouldn't be an issue as long as you're not talking about thousands of concurrent players. Add to that low ping for all players involved that doesn't fluctuate too much. In fact a higher latency that is stable (little to no jitter) can provide a more seamless playing experience, so pure ping measurements may not be the best judge.

Ping spikes and packet loss can strongly degrade your playing performance, so your best bet is testing the connection from multiple points at multiple times of day/week for a prolonged period (at least a couple of minutes). The bad thing is sometimes ICMP traffic (especially small packets) gets prioritized, so you may not be really seeing what your real world situation would look like.



I don't know the hosting market in India, so I won't help here. But I can tell you how it looks in Poland. For top grade servers we're talking about stable < 20 ms RTT (raw ping) for cross ISP connections and < 10 ms for operator network/peering through local exchanges. Cheaper servers hosted in Germany are around 40 ms. For some games this makes no difference, for fast shooters most players complained about the cheaper servers performing sub-par. We used to host around 100+ slots at a dual Xeon/2 GB RAM setup, but it was getting a bit tough on resources when at full load.



And the last thing - I think you can also look for CoD dedicated server for Linux if you're not comfortable with Windows VPS.

If you have some more questions, I would be happy to share my experiences here. You have to know though that looking for a good game server provider is mostly a matter of trial and error as it's a very specific and demanding usage scenario.

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@Deb1703797

Q. What is my best option here. I have
no idea what kind of interface I will
get if I purchase a windows hosting. I
have only worked on Linux hostings,
interacted using cpanel etc.


A. You will need a dedicated server or VPS. most will come with a control panel but you may be able to get a "vanila" install. you will administer the server by remote desktop.


Q. Is it possible to just purchase a
windows hosting and then install games
myself, do any authentication I want?


A. Yes. with remote desktop you can install anything you want. As you will be administering the sever the support from your hosting company will likely only extend to doing a reinstall.


Q. Additionally, I am also looking
some web space to host my personal
projects...


A. If you take a server with a control panel you will be able to use it just as if it were traditional hosting. just make sure anything you do via RDP does not conflict with control panel operations. Having said that configuring IIS with no CP is not difficult.



Your goal here is to run a server were people in India can get a consitantly low (<100ms) ping for responsive game play. As few hops in the network route is also good as there are fewer places for problems and a smaller chance the route will be changed. Ideally a host based in India will peer traffic directly with the ISP of your users. If traffic is not peered directly it will be sent via a transit providers who will not always the fastest route, it will be the cheapest. Even a fast international route will add 100ms to your ping, you need a host in India. For web servers a low ping would only be one of many factors to consider which is why people have advised internationl hosts, but for gaming it's all that really matters. We can't be certain all India hosts peer with all Indian ISP's, they will certainly try to as they save transit costs by doing so but you really need to test the routes. There is a tool called mtr or winmtr (shows you everything pingtest.net would show + lots more) that combines ping and traceroute you need to get as many people as you can who might be using your server to run mtr against a prospective host. You will see the average ping response at the bottom and the name of each node the packet passes through. It's not an exact science and dont panic over one strange result, but looking at a few of these mtr reports will give you a good feel for how the traffic is routed and quality of the hosts network infrastructure. For even more detail you can look up a hosts AS number by doing a whois lookup on the ip, then using services such as this to find out more about their routing. Again use this only to get a feel for quality, it's really more useful for looking at international routing which your less interested in. Private peering agreements will not be shown.

Check forums or ask current server admins for the specifications needed by COD, I dont run game server but from what I have seen a /month VPS should do it. I searched and found several VPS providers in India, get a rolling monthly contract so you can move quickly if needed do no sign for a year or longer. CPU resources on a VPS will be hard to gauge unless you try before you buy and may change as they add usrs to the node. Get as much ram in the VPS as you can afford. Check here that your host is a member of nixi I would be very concerned about a host who is not.

Cloud hosting can work out to be expensive and is not a fixed cost, if you go down this route then check your calculations, also this is unlikely to be hosted in India so you wont get the ping you need. Longer term you should consider moving to a dedicated server for stability and power. Better still would be to Colocate your own server. Gaming servers have different requirements than web so you will get more suitable spec for much less money in the long run. Having a goal (the outright cost of a server) may also make it easier to get donations from players.

If your game server application has no authentication built in then you could just use a firewall to control access add and removing ip's as needed.

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@Pierce454

It looks like you need to go with cloud servers. That's Amazon or Rackspace. Don't choose any other company.

I would recommend Rackspace, after knowing that if your server crashes on Amazon, you have a chance to lose data. Also Amazon charges for customer service while they give it free.

Rackspace provides scalability, and charges per hour rather than per year or month. So if you think your servers have too much load, you can increase the number of servers within minutes to let your users play without interruption.

When i talked to one of their sales person, he told me that they just give a base OS install. You can choose between many distributions of Linux and Windows server. Then you can install whatever you want. Their support is also amazing. Also if you want them to install take the managed cloud plan. Their unmanaged cloud servers are for about 1.5 cents per hour, that's per month and their managed plan starts from 0 per month.

Then I would recommend you to use linux rather than windows because of its stability. If you cant run those games on linux and have to use windows, still no problem, you can host a WAMP Server there.

As with rackspace, you can install anything, so you can install your own control panel whichever you want.

Last thing is please don't host it in India. I also live in India, and have used one hosting company in India which was absolutely crap. I would recommend you to go with cloud servers and provide Content Distribution Networks for faster response.

One note: the company I had hosted with was 2GBHosting.com. Please dont host with them even if you want to host it in India. Also don't host with GoDaddy.com cause they are also bad in hosting. I'm experiencing problems with them too.

One thing: I'm just making suggestions for you, not marketing for any company, and this is based on my experience.

Have a talk with with Rackspace before you choose your hosting.

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