Bandwith for Game Servers?

[wilsonian]

does any one know how much bandwith is required for a game server that takes 32 players on several games?

I don't mean for a home server, more a hosted site server.

[Ramedge]

If your buying from some one like b33f, Jolt.co.uk or other companies that specialise in game server hosting then bandwidth is unlimited, how ever if youve got your own box in a datacenter you may find that you have a limit on the bandwidth you have on your box.
if its soul purpose is for gaming and nothing else i reckon 20gb a month would probably do fine but if its busy all the time and you want to use your server to host web sites and files etc then 60-100gb per month.
The problem is its hard to tell if youve got a bandwidth limit.
Our hexus cs:s server has 2 game servers on it plus Teamspeak and a mail server.
and the eathernet cards reading this.

Device---- Received-------Sent------------Err/Drop
lo----------477.16 MB-----477.16 MB--------0/0
eth0-------3.65 GB--------316.93 MB--------0/0

thats for the last 13 days.

[wilsonian]

What speed connection is that on?

[Ramedge]

i believe its got a GB NIC on it so its like 100mbps up/down maybe more.

[wilsonian]

100mbp up and down? r u sure? i know that'll be the LAN speed but i'm trying to find out how fast the connection is to the net.

Any ideas?

[hitman67]

T1 Line I think he means, they do run at about 100mbps.

[Ramedge]

well its in a datacenter so it all depends on the end users connection to it doesnt it.
i mean with that amount of bandwidth youve got more than enough to run a few of 20 man game servers, if your server can cope with it.

BTW: what bandwidth are you talking about?? bandwidth limits on servers or the actual bandwidth capacity the server has?

[wilsonian]

ah right, just a little concerned that if i get a too slower speed it'll give crap results.

thanks for the advice chaps

[wilsonian]

oh another thing...

when setting up the server do u just need to run the dedicated server program from the game and do game suppliers let you do this with the off the self version or do u need to buy sum kind of bussiness pack?

[Ramedge]

you can normally download the dedicated server program from the company that make the game. If you wanted to run a Counter strike: source server then you could just install steam which is 1-2mb and run the Source dedictated server, how ever there is another way of doing setting it up, i cant quite remeber how/or what it used.
but no you dont have to buy an "off the self version" or a bussiness pack. the server programs are freely available on the net.