I read in the abilities on Linode that a game server is possible but it mentions a minimum, i cant find anywhere on the page what this means?

Ill tell you what i want to make it easier...

I wish to run a game server for about 5 people to begin with then increase this to a 32 player server. I will also require a fair amount of access to the server myself to make constant file changes. In addition, this server will import and export data to a seperate SQL database server.

Also, in addition, can i please have an IP of a test machine i can ping?

You can ping host1.linode.com - host19.linode.com. The first 8 or so are in Texas, the remaining are in California. I have found that a Linode's ping times are about 10 ms longer than the host ping times, so if you get a ping of 75 ms to host12.linode.com, then a Linode on host12 is likely to see a ping of 85 ms.

Hm, I just tried this and it may not be true anymore. I was pretty sure that a while ago I was seeing a 10 ms ping delay in my Linode on host5 compared to a direct ping to host5. But now it seems like they are virtually identical ... YMMV ...

Great, thanks for that, nice and fast.

Now i need to know which plan to go on, how much download/bandwidth etc would an average game server use for a modern game? anyone?

How much bandwidth is used really depends on the game. If a game is playable with a modem, then it probably uses at most 50kbps server -> client and at most 33kpbs client -->server.

Also, it depends on how many players are on the server. More players -> more events -> more bandwidth.

With that said, I did some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations a while ago, and I came up with an estimate of 100 MB per player-day for Quake 3. Trust that number about as much as you trust some random schmuck on a web forum.

To be honest, I'm not sure Linodes are all that suitable for game hosting. The shared nature of the hosts means that another user thrashing the hard disk will cause stutters in your game (which would not normally be noticed when running other processes such as httpd's), and the RAM requirements for games are really too great to be squeezed onto a Linode.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I just don't think it's the best idea.

Actually I run a game on my linode. Its a text-based MUD though.

Lol

Hmmm...

I am not sure how to take your reply. I could almost be offended.

Don't be!

Somehow though, Quake 3 servers and text-based games can't really be compared (this most certainly does not mean that Quake 3 servers are the better of the two )

I did some rough calculations in my head a while back too when I was looking at other hosting options that included about 50GB/month of xfer, and thinking about what it would take to run a 32-player Tribes server. I wasn't taking into account that you'd have to add both the upstream and downstream usage into the estimate, so it would actualy be -worse- than I thought, but I think I estimated that you'd blow through your month's bandwidth allowance in about 6 or 8 hours under full load.

For a real-time FPS game, you really need a dedicated server, and unmetered bandwidth (that is, it's rate-limited, not a cumulative monthly limit). For 32 players or so you probably need about 1.5 Mbps both ways. Plus you need more constant and reliable CPU performance than you'll get in shared hosting like this, IMHO.

Now on the other hand, if you're running something like Starfleet Command's Dynaverse server package, the bandwidth usage to and from the server is quite small, and battles are handled peer-to-peer. This would probably work quite well. I'm not sure how other strategy games compare in this regard, and I'm not sure if the Dynaverse is even available for Linux.

MUDs I would imagine work quite well on this sort of system.

So it all depends on what game you're talking about.

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Ed/Bones.

OK, that's what I thought. Better to ask than to assume.

BTW, I am always looking for players..

http://www.darkforestmud.net