New Allegiance Server
OMG.... am from New York CIty and even there the weather never turned into Ice like a few Weeks ago. (Besides the City is pretty flat.... Here it is pretty hilly. There is no way to drive on that @#(! with out snow chains on all 4 tires. The problem though is all the other idiots who will not drive with snow chains in that weather and slide into you or clog the road . What a night mare. Thank god I was able to tele comutes. I have a brand new 2011 Tacoma that is a month old now.. No way in Hell was I going to wreck it.Necrotic wrote:QUOTE (Necrotic @ Jan 28 2011, 08:28 PM) Hah...didnt know we were living in the same place cable. Did you like the ice/snow?
"If I could remove all the people from the earth I think are stupid... would I be the only one left ? "Sunt superis sua iura -ovidSorry Cable forgot about the pm you sent me awhile back but it looks like you are getting the info straight from the Tiger's mouth so to speak.
In a nutshell: Your $#@!ed if you live in Asia or India with a US or Western European based server and there is no data center that will magically fix your pings. The scary damn thing is how amazingly good TC is with his connection. It would be a shame to lose him, and I for one would love to see an active server for that region of the world even if my pings where ground up poo to it
Finally Fuzz
still holds the Lagmeister title with his beginning days never ending 1000 plus ms pings from Wisconsin.
Best of Luck Cable In Your Endeavour
MrChaos
In a nutshell: Your $#@!ed if you live in Asia or India with a US or Western European based server and there is no data center that will magically fix your pings. The scary damn thing is how amazingly good TC is with his connection. It would be a shame to lose him, and I for one would love to see an active server for that region of the world even if my pings where ground up poo to it
Finally Fuzz
still holds the Lagmeister title with his beginning days never ending 1000 plus ms pings from Wisconsin.Best of Luck Cable In Your Endeavour
MrChaos
Ssssh
First year (almost) free. May experience some minimal charges when using Windows. Decent pings throughout USA and Europe in US East location.raumvogel wrote:QUOTE (raumvogel @ Oct 14 2013, 06:56 PM) I'm reviving this thread due to the pathetic state of the servers. We are seeing an increase in player base and I'd like ideas as to how we can get a server running that has better connectivity, etc.
http://aws.amazon.com/free/
If anyone is willing to pay for a server, I can maybe provide assistance on finding servers. Never ran an Allegiance server, but I run servers for another game with a small community that needs low latency global connectivity. Have tested many different locations trying to find best pings. Allegiance is much more difficult though since you need Windows and most hosts are Linux only. Absolute minimum for a Windows VPS is going to be about $7 USD/month, but chances are that due to the limited options, it would be quite a bit more expensive to get something reliable enough and with low pings.
Last edited by aem on Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Since I haven't played Allegiance in awhile I am not real sure of a couple things. First, are the majority of players still from USA and Europe? Basically you have to pick a server that will have very high pings to either Asia or Europe. Since I am fairly confident we don't have many players in Asia, but a good amount in Europe, I would probably look for a server in East USA.
The other question I have is what is a good ping for Allegiance and what is maybe not so good but still playable? Really can't remember.
I will provide test IPs for some low latency data centers. You can use these to compare with possible Windows server locations to see how the pings compare to what I know to be pretty much the best in East USA.
New York, USA
69.162.169.197
Chicago, IL USA
206.217.137.110
Maidenhead, UK
87.117.225.220
The New York IP is from the data center that probably provides the lowest pings possible to Europe from USA. I know of a few others in New York which are good, but this probably has them beat by at least 10ms to EU. In addition, there are some locations in Pennsylvania and Virginia (such as Amazon EC2) that have good pings to Europe and throughout USA. You might also look at southeastern Canada. While the majority of southeastern Canada datacenters aren't great with latency, I know of at least one that is pretty solid so might be worth testing pings if you see any reasonably priced Windows servers. Note that in all areas mentioned in this post some data centers provide low latency and some are very high. You always need to test the specific data center.
If there are a lot of players in West USA and not that many left in Europe, Chicago may be a better option. A good New York data center can still give some in West USA/Canada pings over 100ms. Chicago usually drops the pings for these players between 20-30ms, but will raise Europe by about the same amount. Chicago is playable enough for most in Europe, but certainly a more eastern location is better for Europe.
Or if we have a very large percentage of EU players active, a server in the UK might be a possibility. This would be quite bad for West USA though so probably not the best idea to have a server in Europe without also having a good server in USA. But if an EU server was considered, UK provides the lowest pings to USA. Most of the Maidenhead data centers have decent latency to USA. Elsewhere in UK sometimes the pings are as low as Maidenhead, but also they can be a lot higher. Moving outside of UK generally raises USA latency by 15-20ms. From my location in Denver, Colorado I get about 125-135ms to the Maidenhead data center listed above and 135-160 to data centers outside UK (for comparison I get around 60ms to New York and 37ms to Chicago).
Most hosts provide test IPs you can ping to check latency to their data centers. Generally I will check my own ping first (ping [ip addpress] at command prompt), and if it looks good I will test global pings at http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php. If global pings are good (close to the IPs above), you could either go ahead and sign up and create a test server or first try to get other players to ping the test IP.
Some data centers latency can go up during peak hours, so I suggest testing latency at multiple times before signing up for anything.
For cheap servers I keep an eye on http://lowendbox.com/ and http://lowendtalk.com/. Unfortunately Windows costs more due to licensing fees, so there are hardly any Windows offers on LowEndBox and not too many on LowEndTalk either. I would start looking on LowEndTalk though as well as http://www.webhostingtalk.com/. Keep in mind a great majority of hosts, especially the cheap hosts, are really bad and can't be trusted, so make sure you find some good reviews for any host you are considering. Beware hosts that offer Windows as a free option on already really cheap monthly plans as I don't think they legally license Windows server.
If you post or PM the maximum you would consider spending per month I will try to look around. Again minimum is about $7 USD / month but with so few options in that range, I suspect it may cost double or triple that before we find one that is reliable enough with low latency. While most hosts are Linux only, some do allow you to install Windows to your VPS so if anyone has a Windows server license to use that would expand the options available. I believe college students can get a free license through Microsoft DreamSpark (https://www.dreamspark.com/).
Again, Amazon EC2 provides decent latency and might be something to consider since the first year is almost free. I think I have about 9 months free left in my account and could potentially run an Allegiance server on it if needed. Definitely would not continue using EC2 after the free year though as it would be expensive compared to other hosting options. I am very busy though and would prefer not to run a server myself.
The other question I have is what is a good ping for Allegiance and what is maybe not so good but still playable? Really can't remember.
I will provide test IPs for some low latency data centers. You can use these to compare with possible Windows server locations to see how the pings compare to what I know to be pretty much the best in East USA.
New York, USA
69.162.169.197
Chicago, IL USA
206.217.137.110
Maidenhead, UK
87.117.225.220
The New York IP is from the data center that probably provides the lowest pings possible to Europe from USA. I know of a few others in New York which are good, but this probably has them beat by at least 10ms to EU. In addition, there are some locations in Pennsylvania and Virginia (such as Amazon EC2) that have good pings to Europe and throughout USA. You might also look at southeastern Canada. While the majority of southeastern Canada datacenters aren't great with latency, I know of at least one that is pretty solid so might be worth testing pings if you see any reasonably priced Windows servers. Note that in all areas mentioned in this post some data centers provide low latency and some are very high. You always need to test the specific data center.
If there are a lot of players in West USA and not that many left in Europe, Chicago may be a better option. A good New York data center can still give some in West USA/Canada pings over 100ms. Chicago usually drops the pings for these players between 20-30ms, but will raise Europe by about the same amount. Chicago is playable enough for most in Europe, but certainly a more eastern location is better for Europe.
Or if we have a very large percentage of EU players active, a server in the UK might be a possibility. This would be quite bad for West USA though so probably not the best idea to have a server in Europe without also having a good server in USA. But if an EU server was considered, UK provides the lowest pings to USA. Most of the Maidenhead data centers have decent latency to USA. Elsewhere in UK sometimes the pings are as low as Maidenhead, but also they can be a lot higher. Moving outside of UK generally raises USA latency by 15-20ms. From my location in Denver, Colorado I get about 125-135ms to the Maidenhead data center listed above and 135-160 to data centers outside UK (for comparison I get around 60ms to New York and 37ms to Chicago).
Most hosts provide test IPs you can ping to check latency to their data centers. Generally I will check my own ping first (ping [ip addpress] at command prompt), and if it looks good I will test global pings at http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php. If global pings are good (close to the IPs above), you could either go ahead and sign up and create a test server or first try to get other players to ping the test IP.
Some data centers latency can go up during peak hours, so I suggest testing latency at multiple times before signing up for anything.
For cheap servers I keep an eye on http://lowendbox.com/ and http://lowendtalk.com/. Unfortunately Windows costs more due to licensing fees, so there are hardly any Windows offers on LowEndBox and not too many on LowEndTalk either. I would start looking on LowEndTalk though as well as http://www.webhostingtalk.com/. Keep in mind a great majority of hosts, especially the cheap hosts, are really bad and can't be trusted, so make sure you find some good reviews for any host you are considering. Beware hosts that offer Windows as a free option on already really cheap monthly plans as I don't think they legally license Windows server.
If you post or PM the maximum you would consider spending per month I will try to look around. Again minimum is about $7 USD / month but with so few options in that range, I suspect it may cost double or triple that before we find one that is reliable enough with low latency. While most hosts are Linux only, some do allow you to install Windows to your VPS so if anyone has a Windows server license to use that would expand the options available. I believe college students can get a free license through Microsoft DreamSpark (https://www.dreamspark.com/).
Again, Amazon EC2 provides decent latency and might be something to consider since the first year is almost free. I think I have about 9 months free left in my account and could potentially run an Allegiance server on it if needed. Definitely would not continue using EC2 after the free year though as it would be expensive compared to other hosting options. I am very busy though and would prefer not to run a server myself.
Last edited by aem on Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Most players are Europe and North American.The time consumption may be the main problem. Most of us are fairly busy...I wonder if it would be practical if a group of us had access to it for maintenance. I know Mr. C tried to host one for awhile, but it overwhelmed him. I don't know the details on that, and he doesn't log on anymore.
