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LAN Party Forums => General Discussion => Started by: jma on September 16, 2010, 11:42:56 AM

Title: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 11:42:56 AM: We all know theres no dedicated servers for BC2, so there couldnt be anything in-house. However if like last year there is a decent internet pipe brought to the lan then its certainly do-able to have one or two servers on the internet for play and tournaments

I'm curious as to what router is being used? If its anything Cisco based might i suggest taking a look at pfsense. Currently I have a spare Pentium II @ 500mhz and half a gig of ram in my home network. I can download 6 torrents at once while not seeing a single hiccup in gaming. This is with FiOS 15/5.

This distro scales exceptionally well with better hardware. 1kb is needed for each connection in the state table. Imagine a Quad Core CPU with 2 or even 4 gigs of RAM. We're talking being able to handle over a million connections simultaneously. This software outperforms routers/firewalls that costs 100's if not 1000's of dollars as long as you have the hardware.

I mention this because 200 people may slow down the internet speeds and its usually due to the small state tables in most routers. This would make a tournament on an internet server unbearable. A pfsense solution would solve this.

www.pfsense.org (http://www.pfsense.org)

I personally will be supplying a CSS GunGame, COD4 GunGame (yes for cod), and UT3 server for this years LAN seperate from FITES servers. And any other game server I can get working in my free time before the LAN. I'm open to suggestions.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: Czar on September 16, 2010, 11:47:10 AM: Are you the one who was upset about D&D at the last monthly lan?
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 11:48:04 AM: Twas a joke ;) You didnt take that seriously did you?

That was july btw. NOt last monthy. You guys always have DnD at lans?

Anyway, we can discuss that in PM's, what do you think about the above proposal?
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: Czar on September 16, 2010, 11:49:51 AM: Very. because I saw your post on a different forum telling folks that they didnt miss out on anything and that somehow, some way D&D took over the lan and caused you to have a bad time. I can take a joke but I wasn't thrilled to see that post on the other forum.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 11:54:00 AM: Well, while it was certainly unfortunate that a game of DnD stole the show, it did get people off their computers to free up bandwidth so that me and my buddy could get some BC2 going on.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 11:55:37 AM: If this is normal at a monthly LAN, then i will surely tell people that. . And I for one will not attend monthly LAN's. The yearly 200 man LAN though I highly recommend.

I was not out of line posting what I did. I was the creator of that thread on that forum ENDORSING the lan initially. I have already endorsed the 200 man LAN on that same forum, which I believe the dates were announced AFTER the summer LAN. I will probably make another thread about it when the time comes.

Not every review can be positive. I apologize if I offended.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: Czar on September 16, 2010, 12:06:14 PM: That was our last monthy lan, July. We don't have D&D at all our lan, in fact, this was the second time in over a year we had tired it. Since the July lan, I've started my own group at my house which meets monthly.

We use pfsense now and have two separate lines that come in to the large events. With people downloading patches, newly purchased steam games, torrenting (yes..), and WoW, it just doesn't work for the big lans to have BC2 or SC2. We are, however, working on something to try to get a server there.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 12:23:33 PM: pfsense has exceptional QoS settings to limit the amount of resources being used by individuals. Torrenting could pretty much be shutdown by doing this and BC2/SC2 traffic could be given higher priority. This is very similar to what organizations do for VoIP traffic.

Newly purchased Steam games could have backup files hosted on the LAN somewhere. I know I will definitely be backing up any steam game I have for easy distribution once on site. Same with patches. As for WoW, those people should be shot (j/k)

I do hope that others chime in for some server suggestions that I may be able to provide.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: decepticon on September 16, 2010, 12:44:53 PM: I only wish we could play a nice big game of BC2 through our net connection, but at this time it would be unplayable having 32 people trying to play out at the same time.

As Czar said, we are working on something possibly to have at the lan. No guarantees. I would LOVE to have a good game of BC2 going, but their Dedicated server model is retardiculous....just like how CoD:BO's Ded server model will be.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: The Shoctor on September 16, 2010, 12:49:13 PM: The problem isn't so much the configuration. Sully has taken great care of the configuration of our pfsense boxes. Torrent's and WoW have been blocked except I believe the WoW rule is time based so those that need their fix can get it during downtime. The problem is we can't guarantee internet service. It would be a bad decision on our part to decide to hold a tournament for a game when we can't control the connection to it. We get enough grief from people who don't agree with our server configs. But if you find a BC2 server that you connect well to from the LAN there is a section to add servers to the public listing. Granted I don't have or have not built the modules to get the game data from those servers. I guess that will get put on the never ending list.

As for D&D at the July LAN.. It was discussed in great detail before the LAN.
http://www.fites.net/general-discussion/dd-at-the-summer-lan/ (http://www.fites.net/general-discussion/dd-at-the-summer-lan/)
We didn't mean for it to be as disruptive as it did, but it was meant for a bit of diversion. Some of us don't see each other except for at LAN parties and we wanted a little bit of a change up. Hell it should have only been 6 of the 30 of us playing that.

As for Czar's unhappiness with the post on another forum I can also say I wasn't thrilled, but you are entitled to your opinion. But I think I can speak for FITES as a whole by saying that we would rather have you come tell us to our face. I can understand your dissatisfaction with what happened, but if we don't know we can't take steps to improve upon things. We try our best to let everyone have a good time. That is the reason why the large events have trophies for winners of tournaments and prizes are issued more at random. I would say that we have one of the most diverse groups attending our events. Ages from young to old. Father daughter and mother son teams; whole families come to our large events. Our monthlies (We call them that even though they are usually 6 weeks or so apart.) are more laid back for the staff and the regulars. I just want you to have an idea of where we are coming from.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 01:21:55 PM: Quote from: The Shoctor on September 16, 2010, 12:49:13 PM
As for Czar's unhappiness with the post on another forum I can also say I wasn't thrilled, but you are entitled to your opinion. But I think I can speak for FITES as a whole by saying that we would rather have you come tell us to our face. I can understand your dissatisfaction with what happened, but if we don't know we can't take steps to improve upon things. We try our best to let everyone have a good time. That is the reason why the large events have trophies for winners of tournaments and prizes are issued more at random. I would say that we have one of the most diverse groups attending our events. Ages from young to old. Father daughter and mother son teams; whole families come to our large events. Our monthlies (We call them that even though they are usually 6 weeks or so apart.) are more laid back for the staff and the regulars. I just want you to have an idea of where we are coming from.

I understand where you are coming from completely. Any educated person who read my post should be able to understand that MY experience at the LAN will not mirror theirs, given the information I provided about D&D. While I was unhappy I kept it to myself at the LAN. It seemed as though the majority of the people there wanted to play D&D. I was not about to be a party pooper! If thats whats popular at your LANs then so be it. I just expressed on another forum of pretty hardcore gamers about MY experience at the LAN. I gave a reason why it was negative. If one of them asked if I would recommend it, I would have to say "no". But I also learned in this thread that this is not normal at the monthly LANs. I understand that you try to make sure everyone has a good time. But I also as a consumer know its impossible to please everyone all the time. It just so happend that it was me who was dissatisfied. If anything.... D&D was a success and you should have it more at your LAN's. Its just not for me.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: Czar on September 16, 2010, 01:42:15 PM: (http://www.czaralex.com/images/fitesold.png)

FITES is unique. We're old. I believe the average age of a FITES staff member is like 26 or something. Regardless of the age, FITES members (both staff and non-staff) have formed friendships outside of just lan events. Cookouts at each other's homes, movie nights to catch midnight releases, dinner outings now and again. You can find us each and every weekend night on Teamspeak playing games, chatting, or making fun of Tibs. We're a family of sorts. Met each other's wives/kids, chat during work, all that. That's why we took the comment seriously. I see where you're coming from now and understand. No hard feelings on my end.

I don't plan on their being any other D&D sessions at lans, due to the formation of my own monthly group, the preparation for that is enough. If I find people new to D&D that want to try, I`ll be happy to run a session in a different part of the building away from the main lan. We have plenty of space here.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on September 16, 2010, 01:52:31 PM: 26 is not old! I'm 27 and I'm sure ill be gaming well into my 80's :2thumbsup:

That being said, I think its great what you guys do and it was not my intent to offend anyone. I apologize again if i did. LAN parties seem to be dieing and i take my hat off to anyone who attempts to keep them alive. Keep it up!

I look forward to a BC2 solution in Feb! This is virtually the only game I've played for months and imagine I suck at any other game at the moment. Hope you can work out the kinks. If i can be of any help myself feel free to ask!
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: sully! on September 16, 2010, 03:30:20 PM: Back to the original topic....we've been running pfSense (and m0n0wall before that) since 2006 IIRC. The hardware that we run it on isn't anything fantastic, but it's always been more than sufficient. We've never even come close to maxing out the state table or even hitting the 50% mark for RAM. I wish the CPU was a bit faster to better handle some of the QoS I do, but it's adequate.

What you can see from the attached is from our last 200 LAN. That's a 5-minute average over the two days of the LAN. Most of the time we were saturating a 50mb pipe from people downloading games from Steam that they either purchased while at the LAN or had previously purchased but didn't bother installing until they got to the LAN. There were also two very large (900+ MB) patches that everyone was grabbing for UT3. It seemed by the time we could get a copy of the files ourselves to post onto a local file server everyone had what they needed.

We'd used a local file server in the past for things like patches and drivers (when our internet connection was the craptastic 768kbps that the hotel provided), but according to the logs it was barely touched. A couple years ago, I decided I wasn't going to do the patch server any more because it was a lot of work to get all the files that everyone might possibly need onto the server for not a whole lot of benefit.

Next year we will have a 100mb connection thanks to our friends at Comcast, but even so, I think we'll be returning to the use of a patch server just to have our bases covered. Even so, I wouldn't want to pin our hopes on having a successful BC2 tourney as we all know it's not the speed of your internet connection that matters, it's the latency. We can provide a gigabit connection to the internet and won't matter if we're getting pings of 100ms to the server hosting the game.

I've been out of the loop for the past couple of months with personal commitments so I don't know what the plans are for BC2, but you can guarantee if it's only half-assed, we won't do it. FITES has always strived to be the best and that's why your direct feedback to the staff is always very important so we can better understand the climate of the gamers at the LAN. If we're not doing something right, tell us about it. If one person says something, they're probably just a whiny bitch and can be forgotten about. But if we have multiple people telling us about the same thing, you can be damn sure we'll listen and try to improve.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: Broken on September 21, 2010, 05:53:31 PM: I started typing something, but i had to delete it and will leave it at a smiley face. Anyone who knows me can only imagine what i was typing.

: )
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: sully! on September 22, 2010, 01:11:54 PM: So I was able to get my hands on one of our 105mb modems for a little while....

(http://results.speedtest.comcast.net/result/49647782.png) (http://speedtest.comcast.net/)

(http://www.speedtest.net/result/963504182.png) (http://www.speedtest.net)

(http://www.pingtest.net/result/24624622.png) (http://www.pingtest.net)

"But sully," you say, "what about a real world test. Flash-based speedtests can be inaccurate!" To that, I say see the attached. And this is running through the very same pfSense system that will be used at the LAN in February.

Yeah....we're good with internet at the LAN :)
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: vincegun on September 22, 2010, 05:56:53 PM: That's disgustingly awesome.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: h4gg4rd on September 23, 2010, 06:23:31 PM: Quote from: BrokenShadow on September 21, 2010, 05:53:31 PM
I started typing something, but i had to delete it and will leave it at a smiley face. Anyone who knows me can only imagine what i was typing.

: )

:hehemean:
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on October 03, 2010, 05:31:41 PM: Quote from: sully on September 22, 2010, 01:11:54 PM
So I was able to get my hands on one of our 105mb modems for a little while....

([url]http://results.speedtest.comcast.net/result/49647782.png[/url]) ([url]http://speedtest.comcast.net/[/url])

([url]http://www.speedtest.net/result/963504182.png[/url]) ([url]http://www.speedtest.net[/url])

([url]http://www.pingtest.net/result/24624622.png[/url]) ([url]http://www.pingtest.net[/url])

"But sully," you say, "what about a real world test. Flash-based speedtests can be inaccurate!" To that, I say see the attached. And this is running through the very same pfSense system that will be used at the LAN in February.

Yeah....we're good with internet at the LAN :)

What hardware makes up that pfsense router?

Also I've found that the speed/ping tests to Philly are generally slower, and i actually live in the Philly area. I always test out of NJ.

That upload speed leaves alot to be desired though. Is it possible to get a better upload speed?
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on October 03, 2010, 05:42:53 PM: Also, I've "acquired" the server files for BC2, and the management program. All thats left is to figure out how to connect by IP, which at this point I cannot find.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: decepticon on October 03, 2010, 05:56:36 PM: ...
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on October 03, 2010, 06:08:36 PM: simple torrent search
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: decepticon on October 03, 2010, 06:17:40 PM: .
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on October 03, 2010, 06:19:11 PM: v1.0.1.0?
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: decepticon on October 03, 2010, 06:20:53 PM: Fuhgetaboutit.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: jma on October 03, 2010, 06:23:11 PM: If 1.0.1.0 is the version you found then dont bother, its an out of date version an doesnt work with the current command center.
Title: Re: Any chance of a BC2 server in Feb's LAN?
Post by: decepticon on October 03, 2010, 06:25:09 PM: Fuhget about it.