[MUD-Dev] Mud Network Setup

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> I was checking out connection prices and equipment the other day and 
> it occurred to me that this was an topic that hasn't been discussed 
> very often on the list.  
> 
> For those of you that are running your own in-house servers:
> 
> What networking hardware are you using, routers, cards, modems, etc.? 

My server is a PII-266 w/ 64M RAM running Linux Mandrake 6.0.  The network
card was the cheapest thing I could find at Fry's, which was a Linksys
10/100 board for $9.95. :)  It's sitting behind a firewall, which is just
a K6-3/400 w/ 32M RAM running FreeBSD 3.4.  The connection is an Alcatel
DSL modem, connected to a standard residential DSL line.

> What is the general cost of that setup?

The firewall machine was just recently purchased, and came to a total of
about $400.  The MUD server was my desktop several years ago; I think at
the time it cost around $1000, but of course I consider it basically
'free' since I already had it, and I probably would have just given it
away to someone if I wasn't using it for a server.  I think it's got the same
semi-junky ethernet card.

The DSL modem was $200.

> What type of network connection and what was the install cost and
> monthly, yearly cost are you paying?

Install was free (well, not counting the cost of the modem), but the
monthly charge is $50.  Currently the stuff I serve (a few web pages,
email, some ftp, and the MUD) are pretty low bandwidth so this is
sufficient but not great.  Should either the MUD or the web traffic pick
up, I'll probably upgrade to the next level of DSL, which would total
$200 a month.

Should things really take off, I'll probably have to go for co-location.
I like having the box someplace that is accessable only by me, but it
just gets too expensive to run high bandwidth into your house beyond upper
level DSL. :)

> What sort of internet service providers do you have a favorable opinion
> of with regards to connection reliability, cost, domain registration, etc.?

Well, for domain stuff I definitely DON'T recommend Internic.  They've made
my life difficult in more than a few ways; in fact, my playerbase took a
serious hit when the hostname (dusk.org) was pointing to the old IP for more
than a month due to their inability to process my nameserver changes.

My previous ISP was @Home, when I was running all of this on a cable modem.
Although I've heard numerous horror stories about them, my service was
excellent.  The connection sometimes slowed to a crawl during a day (which
is a problem, because that's when everyone plays), but otherwise it was great.

My current ISP is orconet.com.  Haven't been with them for long enough to know
how good they are, but so far I am mostly satisfied.  I mainly chose them
out of others in my area because they don't charge for switching your
bandwidth level, nor for a static IP address.

Adam





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