Games LAN Setup

[Alpine Valley]

Setting up an Business, Internet, Games Cafe in a Skiing Resort in Australia and need some advice.
I will be running Windows XP Professional on all 6 machines (5 in the cafe and 1 for control) connected through an 8 Port HUB?SWITCH to a Unix Server and through a router to an ISDN line.
The business application and Internet side I'm OK with but the games side I know nothing about.
?1) What is the best way to set the games side up (using the control computer as the games server or all computers in peer to peer)
?2) Can you supply me with details and drawings of the setups.
Thanks.:snoman:

[Asterix]

OMG NOOOOO not XP it sucks for games!!! Go for 2k pro.

Due to the amount if PC's u are setting up i can see your prob. Generally if you have more that 10 PC's you need some sort of domain in a static environment. (i-series) is diff due to being only 4 days long etc.

If it was me i'd use win2k on the 5 "normal" pc's and 2k server and the other is a domain configuration, thus reducing the possiblities of misuse whilst maintaining easy configuration and control over ther clients.

On the games side, really these should all be hosted on 1 pc (the control PC i guess) but bear in mind that each didicated games server takes between 60 - 90 Mb ram approximately to run. So if you had 6 games running on the server for the other pc's to use that could use 540Mb ram just for that.

If you are running Linux or freeBSD to host the games you just use SSH to control them i.e. launching etc. However, i suggest if you do not really know linux etc to stick with windows as it is much easier to manage and allows you to use the server more productively.

Basically a client-server setup running 2k with at least 768Mb ram in the server would do. Also on the hub/switch thing, if you use a computer to act as the proxy you can control the access to the net and remember a 10Mb switch is faster that a 100Mb hub generally. If you are splashed for cash buy a switched ISDN router which has its own os and allows you to use it a proxy anyway.

/me finishes his rambling as its prob crap anyway

[Leviathan]

Use Switch not Hub
Hubs send data to all comps connected, even comps which dont need it. Lot of traffic.
Switchs send data only to the comp which needs it. Min traffic.

[Fembot]

to be fair it aint gonna make the slightest bit of difference. Hell you could use a 10mbit hub and no one would know. The most it could possilby do would be add 1ms on to pings, but it would save you £50 or so...

If you think about the bandwith being used by games (5kb/sec MAX per pc) + the Netconnection it really doesnt matter. Take into account that the NIC's in the card will drop all packets not destined for their mac addresses anyway adding no extra work to the cpu.

[Space Cowboy]

Asterix - XP definately doesn't suck for games. 2K will be just the same if not worse. After all XP is based off 2K.

Go for a switch, if only because of the cost vs. expandability/performance is worth it.

[Fembot]

XP is awful ALL round.

[Space Cowboy]

I disagree, but can't be bothered to list reasons at the moment!

[vuz]

XP has led to a lot of problems for a lot of people - admittedly its because they haven't configured it or whatever but most people expect to not have to. Anyway, a lot of people have had nps so.. u'll find out soon enough. 2k is great and most users recommend it but I aint arguing - XP SE is on the horizon...

[LordPhil]

In my past experience XP while running games aint that good. Mine crashed alot under HL, while 2k seems alot more stable.

And about the switch or hub. As fembot said a hub will do fine for gameing. A switch would make almost no improvment, although if file transfers are taking place at the same time, you might have some lag problems. It does really depend on you budget.

[WhiteKnight]

Originally posted by Alpine Valley
Setting up an Business, Internet, Games Cafe in a Skiing Resort in Australia and need some advice.

Am i the only one that noticed this...

Austrailia ?

dont you mean Austria ?

[Goldsacs]

Whats with all this XP hate. I use it and think it is the best windows OS I have used so far, but I will say that this is only after it was set up properly. Even found for my PC it was faster than 2k.
However I have not set up too many dedicated servers with it yet and I have the feeling XP will still get huge lag at the start of a map on UT like Win2k got.