Building a server

[poolman]

I am interested in building a "Gaming Server" to use for some small Lan Parties(Around 20 People). I know I how to build it, but I'm looking for some suggestions from somebody that may have done something similar.


Thanks and let's kepp BetaOne Rollin' !!

[Crowdirt]

Hi poolman, been awhile....Some thouhts questions. Not all that familiar with what "Games" do with a server..Is there lots of file/data chunk transfers? Is the server simply a "Packet Director"? Or does the server have a lot of Processing to do? Need much Hard Disk space kind of thing? My vote would be it has quite a few chunks of stuff to move around, mostly Cached in RAM would give the best results. Suspect the machine does not need to be super fast...it can only go as fast as the Network will allow. Just loads of RAM would be the big issue I suspect...

[Sneets]

I have just set up some quake- and UT servers thus far, but what I can say about these is that they are working very good on "slow" machines (400-500 mhz).
I am always using a switch for Gaming-lans, hubs are sometimes really slowing the whole things down alot.