Home Hosting Tips - Garry's Mod

I was just wanting to gather a collection of tips that would help make running a server at home an overall more positive experience. This is my first server and currently I do not have any tips other than the obvious. Please join me in giving a pool of helpful knowledge to all those that were as lost as I was upon setting up my server at home. TIPS FOR RUNNING A SERVER VIA HOME COMPUTER -Have a good computer. -Have a good internet connection. -Learn some LUA coding/coding in general. -Use an SSD if possible to host server. -Use Notepad++ to edit files. *1 -Try to host as little files as possible from your computer, use workshop or FastDL -Google will solve most of your problems. I am by no means an authority on any of this. Just wanting to consolidate a list of things to do. ----Foot Notes---- *1: From personal experience, I could not PortForward my computer because of how my apartment complex had its internet connection set up. I can't really explain it, but after trying for a few hours of poking about, I could not do it.

The truth is hosting on a home computer is never the way to go if you want to make a public, successful server. I'd say it's fine for hosting a private server for your friends. If you're able go for any of the fantastic professional gmod hosts out there.

[QUOTE=snivell;50691492]The truth is hosting on a home computer is never the way to go if you want to make a public, successful server. I'd say it's fine for hosting a private server for your friends. If you're able go for any of the fantastic professional gmod hosts out there.[/QUOTE] The truth is hosting from home is completely fine. You'll need to verify that your ISP lets you host servers but most don't give a damn either way.

Until you get ddosed and can't use your own internet for awhile, annoying your family even.

tip 1: don't. only host a home server for private testing and development.

[QUOTE=darksoul69;50692567]The truth is hosting from home is completely fine. You'll need to verify that your ISP lets you host servers but most don't give a damn either way.[/QUOTE] This is indeed not a big problem. However there will be more downtimes, as the Internet connection (and Power etc.) outside of a datacenter is not as reliable, this could be a problem for a community. A Source Server doesn't need much bandwidth per se (53.4KBits per player*) e.g. 100 kbyte/s for 16 players. But as you share your connection, you will of course get laggs if someone else uses the internet by downloading files. However for simple fun servers I don't see any problem, were not in the isdn epoch anymore. * [url]https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5386-HMJI-5162[/url]

Don't leave your computer up 24/7 hosting the server

Don't some ISPs cancel your connection for hosting servers?

[QUOTE=Sapd;50702540]This is indeed not a big problem. However there will be more downtimes, as the Internet connection (and Power etc.) outside of a datacenter is not as reliable, this could be a problem for a community.[/QUOTE] You can actually have a more reliable power grid at your house then the datacenter has and you can have a better internet connection then the datacenter has. For example if the datacenter is single homed on Telia then the odds are good your home connection is better then the datacenter. Telia is plagued with issues at the moment and your ISP is multi-homed with dozens of carriers and hundreds of peers. As far as power goes.. it really depends on the datacenter. It's entirely possible your houses power grid is more reliable then the grid the datacenter is on. And unless you're paying top dollar the odds are good that the datacenter doesn't have UPS backup and the "generators" don't really exist. Take a look at [URL="http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1584700"]wholesaleinternet[/URL] if you need a prime example.

Your best bet is to spend a little of money a month to not annoy your family. The issues have been previously discussed here but its in the best interest to go straight with a host that specialises in game server hosting with included DDoS protection. It's completely up to you but you will find the more players you get the bigger target for some kid to start sending unicorns your way. I have to also say to darksoul69 that I have never had an outage in a data center in the past 15 years of my hosting career but I'm not doubting any information you have provided but I can't see any data center being in operation without backup supply. All DC's that I have been together with always has UPS and Generators on site with contracts to have fuel supply withing 30 minutes. its just odd.. unless they are one of those data centers where people just put 2 AC's in an office and count it as one.

[QUOTE=Dan41550;50719346]Don't some ISPs cancel your connection for hosting servers?[/QUOTE] No. No they dont

[QUOTE=Dan41550;50719346]Don't some ISPs cancel your connection for hosting servers?[/QUOTE] A lot of ISPs have it in their ToS that you can't but really it's just so if you're heavily abusing the network they have a way to kill your contract and legally cut your service. It's more of a covering their backs sort of thing.

[QUOTE=DerfStew;50721051]Your best bet is to spend a little of money a month to not annoy your family. The issues have been previously discussed here but its in the best interest to go straight with a host that specialises in game server hosting with included DDoS protection. It's completely up to you but you will find the more players you get the bigger target for some kid to start sending unicorns your way. I have to also say to darksoul69 that I have never had an outage in a data center in the past 15 years of my hosting career but I'm not doubting any information you have provided but I can't see any data center being in operation without backup supply. All DC's that I have been together with always has UPS and Generators on site with contracts to have fuel supply withing 30 minutes. its just odd.. unless they are one of those data centers where people just put 2 AC's in an office and count it as one.[/QUOTE] I won't be naming them but one of the datacenters in The Westin had generators on site and had UPS backups. They had a power outage that lasted for several hours because it didn't fail over properly.