Dedicated Servers are independent host systems designed for the sole purpose of running the game on a (usually public) network. If you ever played a multiplayer PC game such as the old Call of Duties or valve games, you are often brought to a “server browser” to pick which server you wish to join.

The advantages to dedicated servers are things such as superior connection strength (If you have a good connection, dedicated servers are often completely lag-free), larger game sizes, customizeable options, modifications, and so on. They typically represent maximum customer experience by letting the people run servers any way they want, and giving others the ability to connect to servers themselves, often negating any lag they’d come across.

However, dedicated servers can be cumbersome to run and cost money. Unless you yourself run a server, this won’t be an issue to you.

Matchmaking is easier to maintain, and is less of a hassle than browsing through server lists. Yet the problem of letting the games be hosted on the connection of players themselves is a profound problem.
How many times have you played a match of CoD only to have it abruptly screech to a complete halt for 45 seconds because the host lagged out? Or any games that consistently lagged through the whole match? This is the problem with the concept of Matchmaking. And the fact that it’s not a perfect system. Because rather frequently, the matchmaking system will crap itself and hand the host connection to the guy with 56k internet living in Iceland instead of the guy with 2.5mb/s internet in Central USA, causing massive lag problems to everyone in the game.
Even if the host is picked “correctly” and given to the person with the strongest and most stable connection, the host will always have an innate advantage over all the other players because the host experiences no lag or lag compensation at all.

Dedicated servers are always seen as an improvement over matchmaking (given the netcode itself is stable) because of the superior connection quality they offer, and ability to be modified. Hell I even remember a few old original Xbox games that let people use their xboxes as dedicated servers. The fact that this doesn’t exist anymore on consoles or developers being too lazy to even implement dedicated servers on PC versions (Infinity Ward) is very troubling.

First of all, Call of Duty uses a host system which picks one persons own router connection in the game that has a connection with everyone. Usually it is supposed to be the best one for everyone, but that normally doesn’t work out. At times, the “host” that is picked has a very bad connection which causes the game to lag so you may shoot a sniper bullet and the shot won’t register until a couple of seconds later. This system of finding a host is a cheap and simple way to run an online multiplayer.

Dedicated Servers are interesting, the game company creates a professional server that is always operating and providing the perfect connection except when it’s not. By that I mean, the server that provides the connection often goes under maintenance and when that happens, you can’t even go into private matches with friends. You can still be in a party chat (if your on Xbox) because that is the console server not the game’s server. This is the only major downfall because when the server is down, everyone loses out on multiplayer. What the company could also possibly do is change back to the “Player to Player” connection which is the current system with Call of Duty. You may say that’s not so bad, but if your competitive and you’re used to the Dedicated Server’s perfect connection, the “Player to Player” connection’s faults will be very noticable and annoying.

A good console example of dedicated servers would be any Electronic Arts (EA) game, such as the EA sports games like Madden and Battlefield. Another good example would be the upcoming Gears of War 3, which allowed players to Beta test. In my personal opinion, Dedicated Servers are good, but aren’t the perfect solution unless the company puts its full effort in to it.

http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9818790

If you are just making the jump from shared to dedicated, I would definately do the managed. They handle the backups, the machine maintenance, etc. To me, them doing the daily backups alone makes it worth it. Their admin area is also pretty comprensive so you dont really need much of an FAQ. Unmanaged means you have to know your way around remote server applications, using putty, etc. It’s not pretty, again, if you are just getting started out. Let me know if you have any other questions.

nevertheless, looks fun

Since I mentioned quite often the hosting service I’m actually using, here’s a link in case you want to check it out