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[gigaraptor487]

Hello,

I have recently found myself in the possession of some old systems, their specs are following:

1) 1.8 ghz core 2 duo, 2.5 gb ddr2, 250 gb (7200rpm?) hdd
2) 1.2 ghz core 2 mobile, 2 gb ddr2 laptop, 80 gb 5400rpm hdd
3) 2.8ghz pentium single core, 512mb ddr ram, 40gb ide hdd(not sure on rpm)

I was thinking of setting these up (at least the first two) as dedicated game servers for my friends and experimented with the first to see if it could support team fortress 2 at 24 players, It could.

After this foray into making servers I have become quite hooked on setting them up and since I don't use these I was planning on setting up each with one dedicated game server(Team fortress 2, Killing Floor and CS:1.6). I have a few questions regarding this:

- Do you think that 1 mbps upload could support these 3 simultaneously(I am probably not going to use the last pc as it is rather older than the others)?

- Are these good choices or are there better games to run on such aging hardware?

- I want to have these running 24/7. However, the first pc is in another person's room who isn't comfortable with it running while he is sleeping but I am, and the router is also in that room and it has ethernet only. Would it be a good idea to buy a cheap WiFi card and simply move it out of the room?

Thank you for the help.

[nenjin]

- Do you think that 1 mbps upload could support these 3 simultaneously(I am probably not going to use the last pc as it is rather older than the others)?

If all three were public servers, I think you'd be running up against your up cap if all three were maxed out.

[gigaraptor487]

As I am under an unlimited plan, how much bandwidth I use isn't much of an issue with regard to bills.

[miauw62]

Upload speed probably won't be that much of an issue as long as you don't host non-standard maps or host heavy mods/plugins to the base game.

[gigaraptor487]

Really? I was under the impression that the data packets sent between client and server were in order of kilobytes.

[nenjin]

I was more meaning saturating your bandwidth than being billed more for your usage.

What does speedtest.net say your speeds are to the nearest major hub?

[gigaraptor487]

speedtest said ~9.8mbps down and nearly 1mbps (0.98).

[gigaraptor487]

After some playing around with the laptop, It seems to be incapable of exceeding 30 fps on  a server with 1 player, which means that it will not work the way I intend it to. Do you guys have any good ideas for what I should host on this laptop as it would be doing nothing otherwise.

[freeformschooler]

After some playing around with the laptop, It seems to be incapable of exceeding 30 fps on  a server with 1 player, which means that it will not work the way I intend it to. Do you guys have any good ideas for what I should host on this laptop as it would be doing nothing otherwise.

Did you set it to the highest power setting? ("High Performance") That can make a difference on laptops.

You could host a web server.

[gigaraptor487]

While I could run  a web server (I can program it), the problem is that I don't have the money for a domain name and obviously using raw IP is awkward for usage. With games that doesn't seem to be case as much.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

[nenjin]

As I said I think if you're running three servers with ~10 people or more a piece, you're going to run afoul of your 1mbps up. It's really the kind of thing you can only test under load, though.

[Anvilfolk]

While I could run  a web server (I can program it), the problem is that I don't have the money for a domain name and obviously using raw IP is awkward for usage. With games that doesn't seem to be case as much.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Check out No IP. They have a free service that can get you a not particularly enticing domain name like "mycomputer.noip.org".

If you're going webservers, I might suggest some form of version control system, which is pretty useful. That means the server works as a backup for all version ever of your work. I have an old laptop I use like that - webserver, version control system and other assorted uses

[gigaraptor487]

SVN good?
EDIT: Looked at noip, looks pretty good for what it is.

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, no-ip is decent, but the free version requires you to solve a captcha every 2 weeks or every month or something.

SVN is cool. Also, check something called websvn, which is a web interface to your repositories Github is more complicated, but better if you're thinking of having multiple people working on projects simultaneously

[gigaraptor487]

Already have GitHub installed from previous projects, so I think I may use that.

Thanks for the help everyone.