What are Dedicated Servers?

by abirara on September 22, 2011

Question by Wesley Shaw: What are Dedicated Servers?
Whenever people are talking about improvements for the Call of Duty series, somebody always brings up Dedicated Servers. What exactly are they, and what difference would there be if they where in Call of Duty? What makes them better? Are there any examples of dedicated servers that you could give me? Thanks in advance!

Best answer:

Answer by L R
Dedi servers are well servers…..currently CoD uses a host process and the “host” is the player in the game that relays all of there internet back to all the other players. the other players get the information for the game through this host(if the host leaves you get the host migration) or if the host dashboards you get teh “connection interrupted”

with dedi servers there is no host. as each player connects directly to the game source…for example world of warcraft runs off of these types of servers so does yahoo google…etc.

Give your answer to this question below!

Tagged as: Dedicated, servers.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Tony M September 22, 2011 at 1:26 am

Dedicated Servers have their positives and negatives.

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.

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Rizer September 22, 2011 at 1:42 am

Console games typically don’t run on Dedicated Servers. Many games uses a player-to-player matchmaking system in which players are brought together and then a “host” is chosen amongst the players, the match will then run off that players network with all the other players connected to him.

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.

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