Bots & Bandwidth

[mutant]

Hi. I have residential DSL @ 128kbps upstream.
I'm interested in running a very small personal server , playing CS with one friend connected and then using bots to fill out our opposing teams.

From what I understand, 128kbps typically only allows you to run a small server for about a total of 3 'real' friends maybe?

my question:
If it was however just only one friend connected and then some bots on each of our teams. Would the bots still contribute to potential lag issues-, overhead- CPU taxing server issues etc. Essentially acting like actual bandwidth needing players, despite being bots.

my specs- 1.6ghz Sempron
800mhz FSB
1gb RAM
256mb NVIDIA Graphics card
7200 rpm drive
WiN XP

[The_Hard_Mission_Guy]

I haven't tried that , but I think you won't suffer from any bandwith lags , the only burden will be on the cpu , who has to run the AI of Each bot.
Finally , the best way to find it out is to test it!

[DrEvil]

bots still use bandwidth, upload bandwidth from the server to the clients. this naturally goes up some each bot. upload bandwidth is the limiting factor of hosting servers on most home connections, since it's typically much slower than your download bandwidth. fortunately if you're only playing with 1 friend or so you can probably run a decent number of bots, since it's only got 1 real client to send the gamestate to, instead of multiple clients that each get the same data.

[[NvT]_KaszpiR_]

Short description
each player requires about 5k/s of transfer in each way, download and upload, if you host 16 slot game server, full of REAL players.

lets assume you run listen server on the machine that is directly connected to internet, so your friend can join and play

if only you wo play, then server sends to intertnet traffic to your friend only, and you play over loopback (and it is not counted in to real internet traffic of your provider). it shoudl take up to around 2k/s in both ways for each one of you


now if you add let say 16 bots, then those bots will act as if they were playing also on localhost - so all traffic will be looped and will not be directer through internet connection.

but bots move, and the info about movement, shots etc needs to be sent to clients, that means another bots and real players. Bots will be getting traffic from locahost, like you. Your friend will have to get data too, so the network traffic for him will go up, something around 5k/s.

to make it more understandable
if you hsot 16 players server with 16 real players, you need 16x5k/s upload and download , that is 80k/s in both directions total (well a bit more but let assume its average).

Now if you host server for 2 real players + 14 bots you need to use only 2x5k/s, that is 10k/s in both directions.

If you play on the same machine you host game , or you are playing from lan machine, then the traffic is even lower, cause internet requires just traffic for your friend, that is 5k/s


so, you got 128kbit, that is 16k/s, you should be able to host about 3 persons from the internet, you on lan or the same computer you are running bots, and bots itself (their number rather depend on your hardware ).

[The_Hard_Mission_Guy]

So the conclusion is:
Bots cause a minimal discardable lag!

[DrEvil]

Not exactly. From the human clients perspective their bandwidth usage is the same as if they were playing on a server full of players. The only bandwidth saving is download bandwidth on the server since the bot clients aren't operating through the network. Download bandwidth usually isnt the bottleneck of a server, upload is, since it usually has a signifiantly lower cap. Most broadband has different ratings for upload and download, you may have 5Mbit cable modem but chances are your upload is much less than that. This is what is going to hurt the playing experience for other human clients connecting remotely. 16 bots + 2 humans aren't sending the clients any less data than 18 humans. The server is still sending the same information for those entities that are within the PVS of each client, bot or human.