CS:S Dedicated Server Admins, I need some tips

[revnja]

Heya everyone. I was thinking of running a CS:S server as I have access to datacenters in both CA and TX, and had some questions for some admins with real-world experience. It's been years since I admin'd a gaming server, and I'm curious how much bandwidth I'd be looking at to allocate for each player. Ideally the server will be a 12-16 player server (nothing more). Should I put this box on a 10mbit uplink, or should I just go ahead and put it on a 100mbit uplink instead? All the custom maps will be downloaded off of another HTTP server (dedicated) in the same datacenter no matter which one I choose. I was thinking about using an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ box with 512MB RAM to host it. Would the specs on this box be okay for this sort of thing? Or for that many players, will I have to bust out a Xeon? Some real-world insight into an issue such as this will be appreciated. Thanks a bunch.

 

[gorcorps]

I don't run a server, but for that many people you'll need a better system. More ram even as well.

 

[revnja]

Alright, I think I'll use one of my Xeon servers and put 1024MB RAM in it for this one.

 

[Thor86]

For a 12-16 player server, you could use the slower link/server hardware without any problems. But it never hurts to use faster link/server hardware for CS Source server. It really is demanding even for dedicated servers.

More info here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/