Dedicated server questions

[KGoBlin]

Hello I had a few questions about your dedicated servers.

• How much activity are you calculating for 200GB of bandwidth? If your servers are full or near full 24/7, would you still be able to support 100-200 servers on them without going over your monthly limit? Or is that estimate based on your average clan server's activity where it's full only during peak times?

• In the event of a DOS attack on your dedicated server's IP, what can you do to alleviate this problem?

• I know your FAQ says that you are able to migrate an IP from a rented server to a dedicated server, but can you go from a dedicated server back down to a rented server?

• If there is ever a hardware failure after hours or during the weekend, what's the typical response time to have the hardware replaced? What about during regular business hours?



• Also, unrelated to dedicated servers, do you offer any redirect web server hosting packages? Specifically for file redirect hosting for game servers?


Thanks for your time.

[KGoBlin]

Edit: Sorry in the first question, I meant 100-200 players, not servers.

[Edge100x]

• How much activity are you calculating for 200GB of bandwidth? If your servers are full or near full 24/7, would you still be able to support 100-200 servers on them without going over your monthly limit? Or is that estimate based on your average clan server's activity where it's full only during peak times?

The 2000 GB (2 TB) of bandwidth is reflects more than we use on average for our servers and is designed to support 100-200 clients on mostly-full HL1 servers running at 250 FPS or about the same number of Source clients running at a 66-100 tickrate. It typically ends up being around 8 mbps when measured by 95th percentile estimates.

It's difficult to estimate actual bandwidth usage since it depends greatly on the size of each game server, its plugins, its FPS/tickrate, and its rate settings. But 2 TB is a lot of bandwidth.

• In the event of a DOS attack on your dedicated server's IP, what can you do to alleviate this problem?

We can have our upstream (InterNAP) null-route the IP or try to filter it, depending on the nature and severity of the attack. Because we don't specialize in DDoS mitigation, if you expect frequent DDoS attacks, you should probably look at other companies that do, instead.

• I know your FAQ says that you are able to migrate an IP from a rented server to a dedicated server, but can you go from a dedicated server back down to a rented server?

Yes.

• If there is ever a hardware failure after hours or during the weekend, what's the typical response time to have the hardware replaced? What about during regular business hours?

We can respond through email to these types of problems from about 8am to midnight every day of the week. Hardware replacement would typically take one to two business days, as we generally must ship it.

Hardware failures are very rare with the type of machines that we use and we haven't had one with a dedicated customer yet. With our hundreds of internal machines, the most common problem is a hard drive dying, and we see that maybe every six months.

• Also, unrelated to dedicated servers, do you offer any redirect web server hosting packages? Specifically for file redirect hosting for game servers?

We don't yet offer separate webhosting packages, but game servers do come with free webhosting. If you'd like, you could a basic game server and use its hosting for this.

[KGoBlin]

Thanks for the reply Edge. I had two last questions for you. I'm hoping to migrate some servers this way but I'm always hesitant to choose a new host, so sorry for the inquisition.

1) I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with the COD4/Activision Master List nonsense, but master list positioning in COD4 is extremely vital to your servers success. Are you willing to work with customers if their IP has poor positioning on the Master List. (i.e. allow for IP changes or port changes?)

2) Back to the web hosting, are there limits to the web hosting service? As in storage, bandwidth usage and concurrent connections?

[Edge100x]

Thanks for the reply Edge. I had two last questions for you. I'm hoping to migrate some servers this way but I'm always hesitant to choose a new host, so sorry for the inquisition.

It's no problem.

1) I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with the COD4/Activision Master List nonsense, but master list positioning in COD4 is extremely vital to your servers success. Are you willing to work with customers if their IP has poor positioning on the Master List. (i.e. allow for IP changes or port changes?)

Unfortunately, since 1.6 the master list ranking has not mattered when it comes to in-game browser query order: http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... 40&p=16766. In researching this, I wrote some scripts that actually helped me get a server up to #6 in the master server list, but for naught.

In a nutshell, every CoD4 client receives the server list from the master server and then randomly reshuffles it before querying servers.

We can still move IPs around if you'd like, though. In master list position ever starts to matter again, adjusting that was all about the port number and you can control that on your end through the dedicated server installation.

2) Back to the web hosting, are there limits to the web hosting service? As in storage, bandwidth usage and concurrent connections?

Currently we limit it to 4 GB of disk usage and each individual file must be under 100 MB: https://www.nfoservers.com/termsofservice.php. Apart from that, and the other minor things we mention in the TOS, there are no hard rules.

[KGoBlin]

I actually wasn't aware of the changes made since 1.6. Are there any official posts referencing this? The fact that you keep up with that news makes me feel very confident about the service here.
Looks like I have all the info I needed. As soon as COD:WW beta or final servers hit, I'll be out this way again. Thanks again for your time.

[Edge100x]

There has never been anything official posted about master servers that I am aware of -- all the information out there has been discovered via observation by server admins. In the case of the changes since 1.6, I investigated this personally and thoroughly.

[KGoBlin]

Would definitely explain a lot, but it still seems that certain servers have a more consistent spot in the top refreshes than others.

[Edge100x]

It is possible that the client chooses the IPs it checks in a non-random order, but it seemed random when I examined it (that is, I couldn't predict what it would be, taking into account the order it was receiving responses from the master list). Only Activision/IW know what's really going on here.