I don't know much about servers and what is required of them, but I do know that renting a decent one gets a bit expensive.
I'm looking to run a 25 player minecraft server on a medium sized map and I'm thinking 6-8gb or ram would cover that perfectly , but on most rent a server sites that cost around 80$ a month which is a bit retarded.
If I were to build a server myself then having everything running off it I would imagen that would kill my home connection's speed.
What do?
Running game servers doesn't hinder your connect alot however you not "Supposed to" run servers of a consumer grade internet plan you suppposed to get "Buisness class internet." But the chances that you ISP actully catches you running a server is VERY Slim sooo.
One benifit of renting server is they manage it and make it REALLY EASY to run with beautiful control panels. Choice is yours :P
Nine times out of ten, it's against your ISPs contract. I know people who do it anyways and have had no problems, and I also know people who did it, got caught, and were fored to upgrade to a business plan or lose their internet.
Basically if you want to host from home, you'll want an internet connection of about 3mb upload or so. Anything under that is gonna really kill you for something like 25 player Minecraft.
I'm also thinking that something like a raspberry pi cluster might work well, but I know nothing
If you rent a server and its popular enough you could always ask for donations i suppose.
donations are trick, you either allow players to donate to get a retardedly awesome advantage over players who haven't donated, or beg for donations. Both are bitch moves
from personal experience, neither works well... trust me....
a minecraft server needs a fast dual-core cpu, and plenty of ram.
Pi Clusters will not work/not very well with game hosting such as Minecraft.
The best performance on a Raspberry Pi comes from a hard float ABI.
As of the last time I checked, Oracle JVM had not been updated to run on hard-float ABI. And thus a soft float ABI has to be used, which severly degrades performance on the Pi. The problem is further multiplied when using the MPI to get a cluster running.
*Note* Fast as in the sense of a high core clock or high IPC.
hmm I'm not sure about this but you can always advertise though I know nothing about server management and such.
in common ztrain fassion, i have skipped 90% of the thread and am just typing up my answer.
so, not counting minecraft, you can often run a game server on an old desktop... however minecraft (being all shitty and java like) requires TONS of ram, which is why its often expensive. for minecraft, you need about 1 gig of ram per 16 players (if you have buckit). which is a lot for game hosting standards. you also need a 1/2 decent cpu and good upload speeds.
now assuming you have a good enough computer, good enough internet, and you dont care that you are technically going against your isp's ToS (dont worry, they will like, never catch on. and the worst they will do is send you a letter saying to stop)... the process is simple.
you start your server binary... and tell it to listen on some port. now go to your router, and forward the port that you just chose to your computers LOCAL ip address (to find that, open up cmd on your server computer and type in ipconfig). now that your port is forwarded, make sure your server is running and go to canyouseeme.org and check that you opened the port correctly.
assuming the port has been opened correctly, you can then go to google and type in "my ip" google will be all cool and say what it is. give that to your friends and they can then join.
now, if you get super serious about this, you can put linux on your server, which will free up more system resources. and you can buy a domain name (costs about 10 bucks a year) so, lets say you buy "myShittyServers.com" you can then make an a-name record that points to your ip address. lets say the a-name is minecraft. you can then cnnect using "minecraft.myShittyServers.com". cool eh?
now, one problem you will run into... is that if you disconnect your modem, you will sometimes get a new ip address.... there is a free work arround, and its similar to the above domain name thing. you can get a no-ip domain name, and they have a tool that will check your ip and auto update your domain name.... so, say you get myShittyServers.no-ip.info and your ip address is 123.222.132.111 and then it changes to 123.222.132.211 or something stupid. the no ip update tool will fix what your no-ip domain is pointing to, so that way your bros can still connect.
anyway, if you want my advice, host a small minecraft server (like 8 people) or just host something way cooler like garrysmod. (i had a 12 slot gmod server running on 1mb/s up, 10mb/s down, 756mb ram, and a pentium 4 @ 2.2ghz, no hyper threading)
anyway, if you have any questions, just reply to this... ill check it later.