setting up gaming server.....anyone done this?

[XRdirtHead]

Hi,
I have 5 computers hooked up to a SMC Barricade. I ran cat 5 around the house to each of the rooms with computers. Its just for home use for me and my kids. We like to play games with friends and family but I don't want to host off any of these computers. My brothers kids play against us but they always host the games. I'm just wondering if I should build a computer just so I can use it for hosting my games off of. I'm just really worried about security. Would I need to put the gaming server on a different cable line into the house? Can I just set it up in my network without worrying about security? Thanks for any advice, Ed

 

[jonmullen]

Just put in in a DMZ zone on your router.

 

[Hoober]

Originally posted by: jonmullen
Just put in in a DMZ zone on your router.

Right, because then he wouldn't have to worry about security at all.

Do your brother's kids play on a separate LAN across the country, or do they use your internal network? If you're looking to host games across the internet from your home, you're going to need a decent connection in order to get good pings for your brother's kids. If you're on the local network you don't have to worry about security. If you're setting up a dedicated gaming server, for use across the internet, you're going to have to worry about forwarding the ports on your router, that the specific game uses, to the internal IP address of the computer hosting the game.

Which one are you trying to do? Locally host a game or create a gaming server to host a game across the internet?

 

[XRdirtHead]

I guess host a game across the internet. So then we could bring in more players. Then we're talking about a seperate cable line into the house.....that might not fly with the wife....hmmm.....

 

[Hoober]

Actually, a cable connection isn't going to give you a fast enough upload to host a gaming server. Well, I should say that is usually doesn't. Unless you have a high upload cap (greater than 1Mb) you're going to run into slowdowns on most of your clients. Securing the server isn't really all that big a deal, you simply need to know what ports you need to forward in order to have your clients connect to the server. Your problem is going to be bandwidth. Most online games take a require a large upload pipe in order to keep the game playable for clients. I think you can run a Quake III server with 4 to 6 people on a cable line without too much trouble. All you need to do is set up a dedicated Quake server and forward the correct ports. Newer games, like Battlefield 1942 require a little more upload room, but you might be able to get away with 4 people or so on it.

Usually, it's best to run a dedicated server from one machine and then connect with other machines on the LAN in order to play from that server. That way, all of the server's resources are going to hosting the game. It doesn't need to worry about hosting the game AND your console in order to play the game.