Article Written By: Trisha Dave Pearson
Talk to any clan and they are always after the best possible game server provider. But what defines the quality? By looking at a number of points like support, price, ping and the server hardware used.Price tagPrice is all relative to the rest of the defining points. If you go budget then expect no frills and not a lot else. This does not mean that some cheap hosts are not good reputable companies but there is a large majority that are not. If you pay more you should get more but this is not always the case. Some will give you more - but do you need it?Getting helpNo one likes thing to break and I for one sure don't! When things do break we like the reassurance that assistance is on hand. Getting your support should be a secure and easy process when you want it. If your server ends up with a hardware issue then avoid companies who use middle men. Most companies rent their servers from another company, that has resold them from someone else, who has sold the rack space, who has then rented the racks from the datacentre. A simple problem can involve up to 7 companies or more! Getting a server from a company that owns their own hardware and rents the rack space directly is miles quicker and easier. Hours of support are critical - you want gamer's hours not business hours. Gamers really want support during the afternoons and evenings and especially at weekends not 9 - 5 on weekdays. Otherwise you end up waiting until the next working day to get a response and you are left with a broken server for assistance with your CSS hosting.Hardware The old Pentium 4s with 1gb of RAM were great back in the day but no use now. Now you want dual cores minimum and really quads with 4gb of RAM to get a stable server as otherwise lag will plague your game. This doesn't necessarily mean companies are loading their COD4 servers relative to what they can take. To keep costs down budget providers will over sell and overload servers.Therefore test a server in the day and if it's fine then you have made a good choice. So do your research and ask for a test server or test IP's, if you know the companies entire IP range then pop it in Game Monitor and hand pick servers yourself to try.NetworkWe all want negative pings but it will never happen but the lower the better. Companies all go on about each game server on a 100mbit or 1gbit port etc. This is not the important number. The upstream connection from their core switch or router to the upstream providers network is most important. This is because the server might be able communicate with the other servers they host quickly but if they only have a 10mbit connection to the internet it may be a little slow.TestimonialsAlways check out the testimonials a company has, but also what is not on their website or forums as this can make for interesting reading. Many companies are open about the testimonials and will leave bad ones for people to read on there forums to prove they are only human.
This Article Has Been Published on Tue, 8 Feb 2011 and Read 98 Times