Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Gamers and clans will be constantly looking for better game server providers. How do we look for quality? The signs to look for are price, support, price tag and what hardware they use.
The price
Price is only relative to what you get from a company. If you pay two fifths of not a lot expect to get two fifths of not much in return. This does not mean that some cheap hosts are not good reputable companies but there is a large majority that are not. At the same time just because you pay more don't expect the service and quality to be higher most of the times. It will be - but do you need it to be?
Support
No 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. Support should always be a swift 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! Renting from companies who rent directly from the datacentre is always easier and quicker. Business hours are not great for gaming. Yes 9 -5 is great for business, but not for gamers, they want afternoons evenings and weekends. Otherwise you end up waiting until the next working day to get a response and you are left with a broken server for help with your Counter Strike Source Server.
Server Hardware
The old Pentium 4s with 1gb of RAM were great back in the day but no use now. The way forward is quad cores but a dual core processor is still good - look for 4gb of RAM to make sure your game stays lag free. This doesn't necessarily mean companies are loading their Call of Duty 4 servers relative to what they can take. However a budget provider will over sell, so at 2 in the afternoon things might be fine, but come peak gaming will be unplayable. Do some home work and ask the host for a test server or test IP but find out the IP range they have and look it up on game monitor and choose some servers yourself to test.
Connection
We 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. It's what the link between their core switch to their upstream transit provider is. 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.
Feedback
Read testimonials left for a company on their forums but also search the internet for them, as these can paint a different picture. Many companies are taking to leaving any poor feedback on their forums to say yes we are human and made mistakes etc.
The price
Price is only relative to what you get from a company. If you pay two fifths of not a lot expect to get two fifths of not much in return. This does not mean that some cheap hosts are not good reputable companies but there is a large majority that are not. At the same time just because you pay more don't expect the service and quality to be higher most of the times. It will be - but do you need it to be?
Support
No 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. Support should always be a swift 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! Renting from companies who rent directly from the datacentre is always easier and quicker. Business hours are not great for gaming. Yes 9 -5 is great for business, but not for gamers, they want afternoons evenings and weekends. Otherwise you end up waiting until the next working day to get a response and you are left with a broken server for help with your Counter Strike Source Server.
Server Hardware
The old Pentium 4s with 1gb of RAM were great back in the day but no use now. The way forward is quad cores but a dual core processor is still good - look for 4gb of RAM to make sure your game stays lag free. This doesn't necessarily mean companies are loading their Call of Duty 4 servers relative to what they can take. However a budget provider will over sell, so at 2 in the afternoon things might be fine, but come peak gaming will be unplayable. Do some home work and ask the host for a test server or test IP but find out the IP range they have and look it up on game monitor and choose some servers yourself to test.
Connection
We 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. It's what the link between their core switch to their upstream transit provider is. 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.
Feedback
Read testimonials left for a company on their forums but also search the internet for them, as these can paint a different picture. Many companies are taking to leaving any poor feedback on their forums to say yes we are human and made mistakes etc.
About the Author:
If you are searching~looking~after a good~top class host of~provider of game servers, you may~might wish~want to try~check out INX-Gaming. INX-Gaming are a specialist~an expert CSS server host~provider