Hi, im hosting a lan soon and have a computer dedicated to be the server.

ok the lans going to be 20 people max with 2 servers one file (pentium II 450mhz) (thats fine)

But the gaming server is

Compaq Presario 6000
Pentium 4 - 2.4ghz
512mb PC2100 DDR
60GB 5400rpm ATA100
Windows XP Pro

Is this enough? what should i do to improve? how many people on call of duty will it support?

I have a 24 port 10/100 superstack3 3300 XM switch is this ok too?

Need to know what kind of performance to expect etc ANY HELP IDEAS ETC WELCOME!!!

your going to have how many users running games from server?
if as much as 20 at a time your going to need over 1gig, 2 gig preferable of memory
and not to sure about the hard drive thats a slow one
a RocketRAID type setup with 2 drives may help
not going to do video gaming form this point
use the clients

we gonna have 20 max running from this server, dedicated or whatever it is well, i dont really have the money or spaces to get 1 gig (i have 2x 256mb) i might be able to get another hard drive. I have had people say it would be fine and others sayt you need an uprgrade i cant really test it as i aint got 20 people/computers till the time the lan happens. Whats the best thing/ONLY thing i can do to ensure a server that will run 20 max on call of duty, half life and counter strike source

reset the virtual memory to 2gb
that may help
as you know(GIVEN), playing games are taxing to the system,just for one user. some of this is the graphics so if we keep this out of the process server runs faster.
you may also consider using server nic's
enable caching of static files ,not sure how much this will help.
from product help pages good luck let us know how it went
To adjust your virtual memory settings, please do the following:

For Windows XP systems:
1) Right-click the My Computer icon.
2) Select Properties.
3) Select the Performance tab.
4) Select Virtual Memory.

For Windows 2000 systems:
1) Right-click the My Computer icon.
2) Select Properties.
3) Select Advanced.
4) Select Performance Options.

hi thanks for the replys, im not quite sure what you mean about 2 nics? can i run 2 network cards into the switch? kinda like a raid setup on hard drives? if you know what i mean? or am i talking s**t? also whats the best operating system for this server (its going to be dedicated) not running the game itself a green box comes down on call of duty and it runs all the commands so graphics are not a problem.

Another thing should i use the onboard network card for the server or get a cheap pci card? or is there a specific card i can get for a gooooood performance boost its all about the ping. i do actually think that 2.4ghz is fast enough with 512mb ddr ram, but i need expert opinions as many as i can get i am considerably worried about the hdd rpm more than the specs... should i be worried? ill up the virtual mem. Should i partition and have the game in FAT32? i know for starters fat32 is better for gamers and i can keep all windows files in the first partition and have the vitrual mem on another parition will this help ???????

Thanks a bunch

ive also seen these about and they look good, BUT the computer im using is not a server its a normal computer being used as a server and does not have them double the length pci slots, will it still work and will i still see the benefits??

http://www.intel.com/network/connect...er_adapter.htm

You should do perfectly fine I run a server sometimes for AMericas Army (really intense game)

p4 3.06 Ghz
512 DDR2 RAM ram
40 gb Western Digital HDD 7200rpms
160 gb Seagate HDD 7200 rps
10/100/1000 gigabye Ethernet Card(NIC)
pagefile setup 8.4 GB (4000mb on 1st and 2nd Drive)

Before you set it up defrag your Harddrive(s) a few times and turn off your screen saver while you do this. And close out of all applications. You can still let the system process run. Then Turn off your monitor to save energy.

and while your running your server make sure that the other people playing the game fall within the specs of the other computers.

Dont have everyone playing on the 2.4 ghz machine and then have someone with a dual Zeon 3.6ghz processor 16gb RAM, and dul 512 mb Graphics Card with OpenGL play .
or someone with a P1 300mhz 32mb RAM and a a 8gig HD play.

Just make sure you guys are all even, and the other people don't have a bunch of stuff running at one time. Let me know about it maybe I can join/ be the server for you LAN party and make online or something cool like that.

Keep it fair

thanks for your reply, so you think i dont need to upgrade anymore? what about settings how to i make sure everyone can connect to the server easily do i have to change workgroups etc? wats dchp and ics servers turn theses off? how?

also that nic i gave link on up there ^^^ is that worth it and can it work on my machine?

The RAM upgrade would really help you and me for running other apps and the NIC will only help you and the others if you guys all have the optical cable. But I don't think that the game will be transferring 1bg per sec. to any desktops and leave the dchp and ics servers on. What game are you hosting ?

its an internal lan with no internet and the games are call of duty, css, hl2 www.memolan.tk

Ohh man you should really get some internet going on there. Just get a router and start chaining those routers together. Make sure if your using the ethernet cable that nobody uses dial-up that will kill everything.

Get the ip address let everyone know what it is.
First get the server up and running for a few minutes and your admin properties set.
Then to be safe tell everyone to log on one by one you being the first one to do it.

Then if it starts laggin tell the people on your lan to turn down some of ther graphics properties decals, detail, quality etc.

Turn down rendering rate and all that processor extensive stuff.

then you should be fine but do a test run first so your friends don't laugh at you if things go wrong.

using two nics is called teaming
one of the network cards must be a nic server card for this to work
when added to a managed switch set to aggregation it can double the bandwidth
most high end servers use 4 to 6 connections at a time
you said you are doing this on an inhouse network or will there be outside
or wide area network players(clients)?
chaining together routers may be a headache
stick to basics 1 router 1 switch (no doubt 24 port)
let it fly see what happens

Yeah your right I wish the guy would have specified more information about his LAN setup. He doesn't have the internet so it seems like it is an in house or in building LAN party tournament. He is using a regular PC for the server and doesn't have the software to run the upper level cards. Plus the card alone may crash the system let alone 3+ cards ohh man that would really hurt he doesn't have enough RAM and Processing Power for that type of work.