• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Network adapter for a Lan Party server

Y

YoMoma

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 21, 2005
Messages
201
Gathering money for a game server build that I plan to host small Lan`s and take ther server to medium sized Lan Parties of 40 to 50 people.
Server will be hosting 3 to 4 FPS games.
Wondering what is a quality network adapter for a server such as this. I dont want this to be a bottleneck in the system.
 
Any gigabit card with Intel or Broadcom chipset will do perfectly fine, be it Intel, IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco-branded. Be a bit careful with Intel consumer NICs as they are not officially by Intel in Windows Server but you can hack around it although I have no idea how well hacked drivers work. Keep in mind that you dont need a dual gigabit adapter, a decent single port card will do perfectly fine.

Unless you already have hardware I would take the easy route and get a decent prebuilt workstation/server/* which will save you a lot of hassle. Newegg have a great deal on Fujitsu Esprimo P710 series right now (N82E16883257001). They work very well with Linux (you even have official support), Windows and FreeBSD. As far as I can tell Intel AMT (remote access) is also available on this model but I'm note entirely sure, nonetheless its a great prebuilt computer with stock components (no idea that the comment is all about on newegg btw). You most likely want to add more memory otherwise you're good to go. If you prefer a real server this is a pretty good deal http://www.ebay.com/itm/110954081357?hlp=false although I'm not sure about the warranty status. The main difference is ECC memory and dual Intel LAN.

Unless they're broken both the workstations and the servers are virtually silent which pretty much all Fujitsu products are in general, may be an interesting aspect in general :)
http://docs.ts.fujitsu.com/dl.aspx?id=01086659-6924-4cc4-9f8c-0b002702a5ee - P710 E90+ Data Sheet (Intel LAN etc)

//Danne
 
Last edited:
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Are you using VMs or all servers on the same single OS? If VMs, I'd get two dual Intel NICs- one for each VM, plus dedicated for the host. Pile in a ton of RAM and some small HDDs and the server will be solid. Could get away with a 2U server chassis or a microATX
 
My rules:
Intel first
Broadcom second
Realtek never.
 
J-Will said:
Are you using VMs or all servers on the same single OS? If VMs, I'd get two dual Intel NICs- one for each VM, plus dedicated for the host. Pile in a ton of RAM and some small HDDs and the server will be solid. Could get away with a 2U server chassis or a microATX
Click to expand...


Planning on running all dedicated servers on one machine.
It will be running maybe 4 game servers and a TeamSpeak server at the most at one time.
 
YoMoma said:
Planning on running all dedicated servers on one machine.
It will be running maybe 4 game servers and a TeamSpeak server at the most at one time.
Click to expand...

Then you may want dual gig NICs setup in some sort of load bal/ teaming arrangement in order to make use of them in the same OS better.
 
I think everyone is really exagerrating what you need. For that little traffic, really anything will do. An old 100mbit Intel NIC would be more than adequate and I have little reason to believe that whatever you have integrated into your motherboard won't be sufficient either.
 
Blue Fox said:
I think everyone is really exagerrating what you need. For that little traffic, really anything will do. An old 100mbit Intel NIC would be more than adequate and I have little reason to believe that whatever you have integrated into your motherboard won't be sufficient either.
Click to expand...

I dont think everyone is:-P

A 10/100 intel nice would indeed be enough, Gigabit is really overkill. But, I'd use my quad port Intel Gigabit nic:-P
 
Just get a motherboard with an intel nic on it. If you are wanting a card, spend a little bit more and get a dual port intel nic.
 
This will only be a starter server as it will be my first server build. Wanting to keep the entire server price cheap, but still be able to accomadate up to 25 players max.
Will this be satisfactory?
$30 - Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps PRO/1000 GT PCI-E x1 NIC OEM w/ 1 x RJ45
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CY0P7G?tag=intercept-kb-20
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
That would work well, however you could just save $30 and use the on-board NIC. You wouldn't notice a difference in what you're doing.
 
Considering the price of gigabit no reason not to use it. Better to have too much bandwidth than not enough! Single port is fine though. Of course teaming is always more fun. Just keep in mind a single connection cannot use both ports (aka not combined bandwidth) but for a game server this is not an issue as it's expecting lot of connections.

Just for a fun little fact when I ran my UO (MMO mind you, so not as intense) game server I never even hit 1mbps. :D Even with 30 people online.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top