Richard's Want To Donate thread has been updated with more succinct information.

 

I will quote the updated information and append more info at the bottom.

 

I've been asked to explain this a bit further and basically, unlike the above where I can generally point to an invoice or receipt & say "GamingAU Cost", GamingAU takes advantage of the sum total of the Australian based Internet Connectivity of my personal business, Network Presence.

 

The data network & Internet Links of Network Presence have been purposely designed for Australian Game Server Hosting & have serviced online games, some for GamingSA & others publicly and commercially, since it went online in 2008.

 

But we're small, with only a couple of Ethernet links to top-notch upstream national Internet suppliers and we pay 'real world' costs for sophisticated (redundancy, multiple BGP upstream sessions) Internet connectivity over those ethernet cables.

 

So there's a variable component of the cost of operating the data network of Network Presence that I could assign each month to GamingAU & it would be a good portion of the monthly donations over the first $100 each month.

 

Also asked has been "Where is GamingAU?" & the physical servers that run the games for GamingAU are located in the Equinix Data Centre in Mascot, Sydney. They've been there since May & were until this week un-deployed for any Network Presence customers, "idle" if you will, "ready & waiting" I liked to think and now some of them are dedicated to GamingAU for the online games you play & any greatfully received Donations you make.

 

I hope this let's you know what I would do with this donation money, it's not "free beer", it really does go to pay direct costs of running GamingAU & I'm happy to be accountable for its use.

 

Thanks again for your donations at the start of GamingAU coming online, it's really helped get it up & running.

 

Servers are:

 

I can assure you that the majority of a 2.3Ghz quad-core, 4GB fast RAM & SATA disks and gigabit network links is devoted to BigD's PR game servers.

 

Donating for PR Servers Only (if that's important to you like me):

 

If you donate, please feel free to put in the comments field of the donation screens that you "only want your donation to be used for the purposes of paying for the monthly operations cost of the server hosting the BigD games" & I'll do so for you!

 

General GAU Direction:

 

I've posted a fair bit already, see all the posts in the GamingAU Info forum (link added) & I'm happy to give you more information. But the summary is that GamingAU is what GamingSA was but more, but the Community is the focus of GamingAU, just like it was at GamingSA. I was a senior member of that community for some time & I'm not in this to do anything more than provide as much server capacity so that community can keep going without any significant or detrimental change in it's established 'ways'.

 

 

Anyway, Richard seems like a nice fellow, reasonably open-minded and open to feedback, directly. I thought hierarchy may be important but it's not, he was happy to answer any questions I posed, and there were a few.

 

Perhaps, if we get some BigD donations using the method described above, we can have more of a say in how our hardware is utilised.

 

 

Edit: I've donated $20. If you play a lot of PR, I would suggest you try donate something and list it as a Project Reality payment. No excuses about lack of money either, I earn a pittance, have 2 kids (one a newborn), a mortgage, one wage for 1.5 years and my wife and child are in hospital.

Edited November 26, 200915 yr by captncrunch240

cheers for the post SOP (o:

Much appreciated S.O.P, sorry I missed your request for server specs, but Rich would have had to answer that anyhow.

 

As you have already found, and any GAU Admin can tell you, there really is no "hierachy" there. For my own part, I was "retiring" to enjoy a few games with the JW Clan when I heard of the GSA Shutdown (sorry, I still cannot call it a "merger").

 

So I'm really trying hard to avoid any and all work at GAU, but its just not working for me dammit! So far you will find me tending the fledgling Vbulletin forums, and of course looking out for you guys. :drinks:

I can assure you that the majority of a 2.3Ghz quad-core, 4GB fast RAM & SATA disks and gigabit network links is devoted to BigD's PR game servers.

i know it's temp and all, but if this is accurate, wow. it really struggles when it gets full.

 

ahh bf2, you hungry beast.

i know it's temp and all, but if this is accurate, wow. it really struggles when it gets full.

 

ahh bf2, you hungry beast.

 

Well afaik, BF2 & its server component are only 1 threaded, so the quad makes very little difference. If anything it might benefit from a slight overclock :sweat:

Well afaik, BF2 & its server component are only 1 threaded, so the quad makes very little difference. If anything it might benefit from a slight overclock :sweat:

 

3x BF2 Server Processes (ie there are 3 servers) + OS = 4 CPU Threads?

3x BF2 Server Processes (ie there are 3 servers) + OS = 4 CPU Threads?

 

Exactly, which means each process needs the core [it is running on] to be sufficient to run it without stuttering.

I will definitely be providing some support for this eventually, but my current circumstances are; jobless, PR capable computerless and basically homeless and bleeding my savings dry and onto the credit cards anytime soon...perhaps I should provide info so i can get some donations

 

I am travelling though and seeing some awesome places and meeting awesome people and even though I cannot play PR at the moment I would still give some coin if I could really afford it.

I think I understand this whole thing maybe. So ive invented a story through intuition and reading between the lines. This is all guess work. No animals were harmed in the making of this story.

 

So GamingSA ports it gaming servers over to 3FL so Adam, iinet and westnet can pool their resources or under some other agreement which, I would suspect involves something to do with the words, money and cheaper.

 

Then GamingSA, I mean Adam, who was providing (for charity?) some servers to BigD perhaps didnt view (in combination with its new ISP gaming partners) 1000 members on BigD as worthy enough to try and get 3FL to provide some servers for this particular community. (Perhaps now its not just dealing with Adam people, but westnet and iinet people to, and they are LESS THAN CHARITABLE - assumption btw)

 

So GamingAU is formed as a new enteprise under the private business holdings of Network Presence, of whome several adminstration + head staff were previously responsible for a BigD/server maintence presence within GamingSA, contract? paid employees? Asking for too much info maybe.

 

GamingAU has a premise of renting servers out in the same way it provides custom hosting for other purposes under Network Presence...eventually? GamingAU is a sicker name tho . So BigD, has gone from charity to charity. As our members are probably spread over ISP's from Adam to Internode to Telstra to singtel, we hence have no real consumer commercial power as to where BigD ends up. By virtue of being not of a particular ISP with a representative gaming community, the clout that represents $50 a month per player is diffused across this fine land of ours.

 

So. Thankyou for the server charity. It's appreciated. I hope GamingAU manages to secure some good contracts from other ISPs that can (sans probably) pay more than BigD.

Disclaimer: I am not nor have I ever been a "paid" employee of Adam,iinet, or ANY gaming Network. I'm just a guy who likes to help people.

 

Sorta, and I have had to make many conclusions myself too, most probably wrong, but the lack of real info given was also astounding.

 

Adam Internet cut a deal with Iinet. There is now much peering of free local data going on between those 2. Note Adam logo prominent at top of 3FL Site.

 

GamingSA Servers were to be mirrored onto 3FL Hardware being hosted by Adam in Adelaide. Thus Adam now becomes an SA "Point of Presence" for 3FL.

 

To the best of my knowledge 3FL Servers were mainly WA and Sydney until now. So a Win for Adam and Iinet customers all around I guess. More servers, better hardware, more peering.

 

The word was that 3FL were interested in taking on "ingame" admins only. As you well know, its difficult to properly provide for "niche" gaming communities such as yourselves without proper access to the necessary tools to do so.

 

Add to that that most of us visited the 3FL forums and went, prob a bit "4chan style" for us, and you can see why 90% of GSA did the bolt right quick.

3x BF2 Server Processes (ie there are 3 servers) + OS = 4 CPU Threads?

Server 1 and Server 2 have different IP's (now) so that means they are on different boxes, does it not?

 

I can see on the GAU forums, spread out, the IP's for some of the servers and a few are sharing boxes. Since I don't know if they are all listed in the same place, it's hard to tell if, or which server is also on the same IP.

 

It's also hard to tell if, when the lag starts, whether or not it's player number-related (likely), large map-related (also likely)or whether it's time-related (example, the other game that may be on the box also populates at the same time of night which could be likely).

 

Take RO for example. GA, at the time, was the only provider to run a decent 50 player server as it took a super computer to do it when it was full. We petitioned the admins as GameOps (they ran 50 on shared boxes from memory) that it wasn't working and for it to be decent, had to be improved hardware. Got there in the end.

 

Whereas it seemed like they could run 15 CS servers on the same box with zero issues (exaggeration). Some boxes shared multiple different games.

Server 1 and Server 2 have different IP's (now) so that means they are on different boxes, does it not?

not neccessarily, if the server box has two nics you could assign different ip's to each nic, also if its running vmware you could prolly do the same as well...

Seems like a lot of hassle. Usually ports just change, IP's stay the same.

 

Since I'm not running the place, I don't know. I suppose I could ask him directly, but that's not really my prerogative in this situation, more admin-related.

Not that I am telling you that you are wasting your time talking about it here but...

 

You are wasting you time talking about it here.

 

I'm sure that the GAU guys are on the case and will have the load issues sorted out ASAP. Remember the paint has barely had time to dry on the new servers so there is bound to be a few hiccups to be sorted out. I have a feeling that the GAU guys know what they are doing and don't need our no doubt expert advise telling them how to run things.

One thing Darth has asked for is if we can log:

 

Time and date

server

number of players

map

effects seen and duration of problem

 

 

They have a couple of avenues which they are investigating - but the more info we can provide of this nature would be appreciated.

Not that I am telling you that you are wasting your time talking about it here but...

 

You are wasting you time talking about it here.

 

I'm sure that the GAU guys are on the case and will have the load issues sorted out ASAP. Remember the paint has barely had time to dry on the new servers so there is bound to be a few hiccups to be sorted out. I have a feeling that the GAU guys know what they are doing and don't need our no doubt expert advise telling them how to run things.

Sorry mate, we are discussing things, not telling anyone how to run things.

 

That post was not needed. Thanks for you expert advice though, it's taken under advisement.

 

 

Noddy: Thanks. I take it I don't need to log the one you were on last night?

correct... passed those details over already.

Good Oh, as always I am still on the job working on the best possible FREE solution for you guys, and yes, its still ongoing.

 

Server 2 was moved to its own VPS, and yes I'll let you know when more

"grunt" has been added to it, which has been requested. :hi:

 

As always in life, what you get for free sometimes varies, but I'm on it.

 

UpDate: Checked, it has more RAM now.

Edited November 27, 200915 yr by DirtyMax

it's not really that free if we are donating directly to the cost of running it, as per richard's instructions. i've already sent my 20 dollars towards it.

 

that's why i indicated that if we donate enough towards it's running, maybe a hand will be forced to give us the best experience possible, not balancing it with other needs.

Yeah, because $20 each from 5 people will definately buy a $3000 server, plus hosting costs, plus networking costs.

 

You aren't buying a part of the server. You aren't buying a membership to GAU. You aren't buying anything.

 

It's a donation. You aren't guarenteed anything. You don't have any right to demand anything. That's what a donation is - you're giving something for nothing.

 

If you don't like it, don't donate.

 

Definition

Donation: a voluntary gift (as of money or service or ideas) made to some worthwhile cause

Edited November 27, 200915 yr by efgh146

No one was demanding anything, nor was that my intention.

 

If we get 25 people donating $20, then perhaps that would push our concerns higher but demand them? Not mentioned.

 

you're giving something for nothing.

Hardly, even your definition states a donation is to a worthwhile cause.

 

 

Please get off the high horse. It's embarrassing. And didn't we discuss this earlier? You don't talk to me, I don't talk to you. Or are you falling back into the old ways of only ever posting when you are trying to make me look like an idiot.

 

Respect my opinions, as per the forum rules. Cheers.

Edited November 27, 200915 yr by captncrunch240

it's not really that free if we are donating directly to the cost of running it' date=' as per richard's instructions. i've already sent my 20 dollars towards it.[/quote']

Yes its free . . . you chose to donate and therefore CHOSE to make it NOT free, that is your doing not theirs.

 

Also stop taking everything on these forums like its a personal attack, Abstabjoo is not on a high horse but mind you I think you may very well be.

the thing is, i want to help. i've always wanted to help. that's why i hit richard up to make sure that we could support our server directly and not the other games. he was quite happy to make that distinction for us.

 

how much have you donated chan, so far. do you have intentions of donating. does anyone. hands up if you want to help the new gaming network out, gamingau doesn't have the capacity of gsa and their previous support. i will be interested in seeing who would, and who wouldn't.

 

i don't take everything as a personal attack. for example, your post. or anyone's. stabby and i have a semi-gentleman's agreement decided through pm's not to talk to each other on these forums, or address each other's posts, as to my understanding.

 

perhaps, before you jump in, you could consider the wording of my post to him.

 

 

and to break it down anyway. gamingau is a gaming network who's main goal is to provide decent, lag-free servers to the community for free. that, i applaud.

 

now if the costs are 3000 plus hosting and network, then that expense is already decided and covered. now, if the servers are laggy, that goes against the gau name, does it not. so, if we donate any amount of money to the costs, doesn't that help gau try to fulfil their goal of having lag-free servers. surely their objective isn't to have as many laggy servers as possible.

 

i'm confused how donating isn't helping gau achieve their goals. please donate.

I'm by no means against donating. I've already donated my $50. What I'm against is people donating, then expecting to be given preferential treatment, or expecting the collective ~$200 of the communities donations to dent the operational costs of running a server like this, or demanding that things improve because they've "invested" in the company.

 

Before I continue, I just want to iterate that I'm not trying to make you look like an idiot. I'm telling it how myself and a number of other people are seeing it.

 

Whether you mean it or not, you're coming off as a major ungrateful, demanding, petulant jerk, and you're pissing off a lot of people with the constant nagging and what is coming off as whinging. If that's your intent, then congratulations, you're doing a fine job. If you're trying to push the limit of what you can get away with, then I think it's safe to say enough is enough. If that's not your intent, then now you know. If you want to keep it up, you're more than welcome.

<sigh> . . . was an interesting thread, now it looks like its going the way of the New Servers thread . . .