Stable Permanent Server: Minimun Requirements and Other

[JBenison]

Guys, I am trying to run a permanent server, mainly for some friends here in the Dominican Republic.

I have searched around the forum, but I can not find a paper on minimun requirements to run a server.

So if someone can tell me something about that. Preferably someone with experience in running a server (Image maybe?).

Anyway, if possible, I will be opening this servers and it will be regularily used by 7 to 12 players.

I have a:
Pentium II 450 as world/zone server
Pentium III 1.2G as MySQL Server
512 DSL Connection.

Is this good? Also how many zones do I need up? Is there something I can do (aside from buying new PCs) to make this run smoother?

Anyone knows how stable servers run? On what kind of equipment? etc...

Any suggestion, help or answer is greatly appreciated.

JB.

[Merth]

Pentium II 450 as world/zone server
Pentium III 1.2G as MySQL Server
I would switch this up - put the zone servers up on the p3 and the world/mysql server up on the p2. 15 zone servers ought to handle 7-12 people well enough. As long as you're not on a slow connection, your setup should work well for you. I was amazed at how well a weak computer handled the processing load.

Any guesses I could make on bandwidth versus cpu requirements would be based on 0.4.4. I don't know about 0.5.0. However, based on improvements in the client processing loop, we may have cut down significantly on bandwidth requirements in 0.5.0. OP_ClientUpdate is now sent much less frequently.

[JBenison]

It would be difficult for me to trade the DB and the Zones as we are talking about my development server (e.i. not only for EQ); but I can surely run the zones at the P3, with a little router change to ports.

Is that ok if I run DB and World/Zones in the same PC? I am using 4.4... not planning for 5 until I learn more about it and it is considered stable.

I will probably go with you and put up 15 zones. Thanks for that one.

Want a good experience for my players.