20 Jul, 2009, soldierofthelord wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno owns a hosting server, so why didn't he post here? Furthermore, how can we learn how to manage a server if no one that has one posts here? I think that these are legitimate questions.
20 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't think the idea is that everybody who owns a hosting server is supposed to post here. Rather, it seems that the intention is for people to talk about managing servers. I'm not sure if you're expecting people to post tutorials on running servers. You can still learn to manage servers by asking questions. :smile: "I think that these are legitimate answers." (sorry, couldn't resist)
20 Jul, 2009, soldierofthelord wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Do you know anything about managing servers? Also, can I use my computer as a server for a MUD?
David Haley said:
"I think that these are legitimate answers." (sorry, couldn't resist)

Lol, no need to apologize. Poking fun at other people in a friendly manner is both something that I do and don't mind being done to me.
20 Jul, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 4th comment:
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soldierofthelord said:
Zeno owns a hosting server, so why didn't he post here?

Yes
soldierofthelord said:
Furthermore, how can we learn how to manage a server if no one that has one posts here?

Yes
soldierofthelord said:
Do you know anything about managing servers?

Yes
soldierofthelord said:
Also, can I use my computer as a server for a MUD?

Yes

HTH
20 Jul, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 5th comment:
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Just got home from a 4 day con…

What.
20 Jul, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 6th comment:
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using your own computer as a server is possible but not always a good idea unless you have really fast internet with no bandwidth limitations and plenty of memory. All in all, you need a higher end computer to run a mud unless you are just using it for testing, in which case you don't even need to put it online, you can just run it locally. Either way, to run a mud on your computer, you just need to have it on your harddrive, have linux installed, or cygwin, and start it up. If you want other people to connect to it, you'll need to give them your IP address so they can connect. For you to connect to it, in the address spot on your mud client you type localhost instead of mymud.mudhost.net.

If you have any other questions on how to run a mud locally feel free to ask. I'll try to answer anything I can.
20 Jul, 2009, soldierofthelord wrote in the 7th comment:
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Thanks, Igabod. I appreciate your willingness to help a beginning coder.
20 Jul, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 8th comment:
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Most muds use precious little bandwidth and memory.
Of course the requirements of language and operating system vary.
20 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 9th comment:
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Quote
All in all, you need a higher end computer to run a mud unless you are just using it for testing


!Truth.
20 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
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Tyche said:
Most muds use precious little bandwidth and memory.
Of course the requirements of language and operating system vary.


Truth.
20 Jul, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 11th comment:
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Igabod said:
using your own computer as a server is possible but not always a good idea unless you have really fast internet with no bandwidth limitations and plenty of memory. All in all, you need a higher end computer to run a mud


No, just no.

I can run a MUD on the 32 MB RAM P2 I have in my garage with it hooked up to a dialup connection. MUDs are not graphical games, their requirements are incredibly low. My laptop could likely run 20+ MUDs at once with no issues with each of them have 20+ players on.

EDIT: That'll teach me to type and eat then push submit… I started this post before Tyche and Runter's replies :redface:
20 Jul, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 12th comment:
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well limited bandwidth is only a problem because sometimes people will use up all their bandwidth surfing the web and then their mud will go down till the next day.
20 Jul, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 13th comment:
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Fizban said:
I can run a MUD on the 32 MB RAM P2 I have in my garage with it hooked up to a dialup connection. MUDs are not graphical games, their requirements are incredibly low. My laptop could likely run 20+ MUDs at once with no issues with each of them have 20+ players on.


Back in 1996, I was running a ROM with a dozen players and a ColdC server with 3 regular users on a 486dx66 with 16 mb of memory on a dedicated Windows 95 box on a 56kb dial-up modem. Nobody complained about lag. They did complain about my ISP booting me three times a day and causing them to have to reconnect.

Anyway your basic Rom(Dikus), LPC and Mushen haven't really changed all that much since.
Hardware, bandwidth, and OS stability have increased magnitudes beyond what we were using then.

I guess checking with your ISP contract would be in order. Netcom used to send me hate e-mail because my dialup was holding up one of their phone lines, however they never did anything about it. Never had any problems with running servers on Alltel DSL or Warner cable.
20 Jul, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 14th comment:
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the limitations I specified aren't because of the usage of the mud, but because of the fact that this is a personal computer as well as being used for a server. If a person is running a mud on their personal computer AND playing WOW or surfing through youtube or whatever else their net habits might be, then the mud is likely to experience a slow-down or a shutdown due to bandwidth usage. And youtube uses a LOT of bandwidth.

So, to use your personal computer as a server you need higher specifications than you would if you were running your mud on a dedicated server. Simple.

[edit to add] You COULD technically run a mud on a commodore 64 if you ran nothing else on that computer, but for the best performance you'll need something better than a hunk of junk is what I mean by "high-end computer" I think people took that to mean a 3000 dollar computer when I meant it only as something other than a paper weight that hasn't yet been melted down.
20 Jul, 2009, Guest wrote in the 15th comment:
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The only reason playing WoW, surfing Youtube, watching porn, sending thousands of spam emails, or whatever else it is people do with their boxes these days would have any affect on a MUD running on the same box is because you'd eat up all the bandwidth. The process on the box itself would hardly notice otherwise. The lag would be purely because of a saturated line, not because you had the CPU pegged at 100% for 5 hours straight doing raids or whatever it is you WoW players do :)

Quote
You COULD technically run a mud on a commodore 64 if you ran nothing else on that computer


No joke actually, I knew someone back in the late waning days of the C-64 who ran a MUD on his poor ailing computer. But back then I really wasn't all that aware of what he was doing besides "playing D&D with strangers" as he put it then. High end 1200 baud C-64 modems were the rage. Though, I suspect his parents were none too happy to have the phone line tied up with however he was allowing the public to connect. Sort of silly to say "if you ran nothing else" because a C-64 was not capable of multitasking. You ran one app/game/whatever, that was it.
20 Jul, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 16th comment:
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lol ok so my experience with a commodore is a bit lacking but the point remains. I was mainly talking about all the bandwidth usage as the problem there. The memory thing may have been a mistake to mention since nearly all computers these days (even cracker jack computers) have enough memory to run a mud.
20 Jul, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
You guys…. :)

You're confusing bandwidth with latency again. MUD's don't need much bandwidth, in fact, graphical games don't usually need much bandwidth either (textures are 99% of the time stored locally). Both, howver, need reasonably low latency.

For a text MUD, 200ms is just fine, as it's rare for players to react much faster if they're actually reading and not just speedwalking. For a graphical game, 50-100ms is typical, although most people will tell you that it's still noticeable and LAN speeds of 5-10ms are ideal.

That said, running a home game is perfectly possible IF you control your own LAN usage to ensure there's always open bandwidth to ensure a reasonable latency.

For example, on my cable modem, I have a 10Mbps download cap and a 1.5Mbps upload cap. If I download something from a fast site, it will saturate my link sufficiently to impact latency. If I use bit torrent, I can forcibly cap its upload speed at 20KBps and never notice it running, but if I raise the cap to 50KBps, my ping times go from 80ms to 350ms and game playing becomes sluggish. Uncapped, it saturates the link entirely and makes the network practically unusable for anything else.

So, if you're planning to run a MUD from home, you need two things. One, a way of ensuring reliably low latency, either via a firewall setup that controls that, or restraining yourself and anyone else on your LAN. Two, a DNS entry which will reliably point to your own IP address… either by getting a fixed one (ideal), or using a dynamic DNS system and making sure it updates ASAP if your IP changes.

Hardware… don't even worry about it. Find whatever old computer you can for free (or $10 at a garage sale), and it'll probably work. We used to run a MUD with 40+ players on all the time on a Sun 4/110, which was the equivalent of a 486/33, and we used 9M of RAM.
20 Jul, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Hardware… don't even worry about it. Find whatever old computer you can for free (or $10 at a garage sale), and it'll probably work. We used to run a MUD with 40+ players on all the time on a Sun 4/110, which was the equivalent of a 486/33, and we used 9M of RAM.

Latency is affected by what all is running on the server. A decent sized codebase will take 10 minutes to compile on a 486 and noticeably increase latency. So it's probably wiser to spend 100$ on a computer with a 2 GHz processor, if only for the fast compiles.
20 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
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The amount of time a codebase takes to compile has little to nothing to do with the latency it will have when running…… and latency is affected by more than just what's running…
20 Jul, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 20th comment:
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Igabod said:
using your own computer as a server is possible but not always a good idea unless you have really fast internet with no bandwidth limitations and plenty of memory. All in all, you need a higher end computer to run a mud unless you are just using it for testing, in which case you don't even need to put it online, you can just run it locally.


Others have adequately explained why this is wrong, I'll leave that alone.

Igabod said:
Either way, to run a mud on your computer, you just need to have it on your harddrive, have linux installed, or cygwin, and start it up.


That's not really very accurate. There are codebases that run just dandy on Windows. Dead Souls,
for example, and Coffeemud don't require cygwin to run in Windows.

I'd like to point out that soldierofthelord appears to be a newcomer, so I'd suggest giving
him advice appropriate for a newcomer. Running a big popular mud with hundreds of
players on the same PC you use to stream Netflix might be a bad idea. Sure. But
the dude is clearly messing around, getting his feet wet.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
0.0/73