Working With A Great Internet Provider

Game server creates an easy way to play with friends, modify the gameplay experience with your own ideas or simply explore your technical skills with entertainment that many people can enjoy. The game can also a great lesson in networking and server management, offering a lot of tools that show you what to do. As with any server, a game server can be managed with your own home equipment or leased virtual resources at a data center. To understand what you need for a reliable game server, take a look at a few requirements and options.

What Makes A Game Server Different?

A server is a computer that distributes (or serves) files. Servers have become more sophisticated over the years, and can perform complex calculations while distributing the results to computers that are connected. Game servers contain the files that represent the game's environment, and create results based on not just the actions of the connected players, but the evolving, computer-managed environment that some games have created.

Game servers often have higher requirements than simple file servers. You'll need an Internet connection that can support different file sizes depending on how many players are connected. Although every game is different, online gaming theory suggests that developers make data packets for games as small as possible to support customers who may be on slower connections.

Do You Have The Resources For Home Server Management?

You'll need a computer with a fast enough processor and enough memory to support a specific number of players, which is different for every game. The key part is a high speed Internet connection, which might not be available for residential Internet users.

Since servers send a lot of information to the connected clients, you'll need a reliable upload speed, which governs how fast you send files out of your network to the Internet. Many residential Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide Internet plans with slower upload speeds than download speeds. These connections are called asynchronous, and can be an issue if your server has a lot of connected users.

A data center may be able to offer the services you need. Instead of using your own resources or buying a costly Internet plan that is mostly used for gaming purposes, you can buy a cheaper service from a data center that already has a massive Internet connection.

Data centers have many high-profile clients and are expected to have a lot of Internet capacity or bandwidth. For most game servers on the market, the resource needs are low and the cost of running your server may be cheaper than even a basic Internet upgrade. To find out if you could be saving resources, contact a data center like Cologix and ask about hosting your game.