[Announcement] Major Expansions Into The United Kingdom & United States

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hello everybody,

 

I am here to announce the two major expansions we are currently working on. We are expanding into the United Kingdom and United States using different hosting providers.

 

Unfortunately, we've found that OVH has been difficult to expand with. Their support time has been incredibly slow (example #1) regardless of critical issues and their data center located in Montreal, Canada isn't ideal for a majority of players in the United States regarding latency, etc. I do understand their prices are very good (especially for the hardware we receive), but unfortunately their support doesn't meet our needs and our servers struggle to populate partially due to their data center's location.

 

Therefore, I've decided to go searching for new hosting providers and I've found two that have great setups and a lot of potential in my opinion (especially for GFL). With that said, I get direct support via Steam, Discord, and even TeamSpeak 3. On top of that, both hosting providers have built their own network dedicated to hosting game servers by owning their hardware, etc. This results in lower latency and great (D)DoS protection. Overall, I feel these new hosting providers will do well for us and I am very confident!

 

The new hosting providers are Croncos (UK) and GMCHosting (US).

 

I've requested first-month discounts or a custom build with lower specs/prices to start. This is because we are in a testing stage for both hosting providers. I want to ensure our game servers will populate and things will go well with us. Once this is confirmed, we will be upgrading our machines to the machines with the best hardware for best performance.

 

Before reading - The server lineups could change. This is the expected lineups at the moment.

 

Side note - Due to additional IPs being more expensive than OVH with these new hosting providers, we have decided to use one IP for most game servers and different ports ranging from 27015 - 27025 depending on the game's engine. We may have to purchase additional IPs for some games due to the firewall filtering. This shouldn't affect population whatsoever. Our very successful CS:S Zombie Escape server ran on port 27017 in the past without any issues.

 

United Kingdom

We have recently purchased a machine from Croncos. We've purchased the machine for $84.96 the first month. However, afterwards it will continue at its normal price. Here are the specs of the machine:

 

• Intel i7-4790K @ 4.0 GHz.
• 32 GBs of DDR3 RAM.
• 240 GBs SSD.
• One IPv4 address.
• 10 TBs of bandwidth.
• 1 gbps port.
• Located in London, UK.
• $111.10/m.
• No setup fee.

 

As mentioned above, the machine is located in London, UK. I've found that this location has a great amount of players. For example, our Garry's Mod Murder server we've setup recently has been doing very well and receiving many NEW players.

 

If this hosting provider works out, we will likely be upgrading to a future machine with the following specs:

 

• Intel i7-4790K overclocked to 4.4 GHz
• 32 GBs of DDR3 RAM.
• 480 GBs SSD.
• One IPv4 address.
• 10 TBs of bandwidth.
• 1 gbps port.
• Located in London, UK.
• $130.70/m.
• No setup fee.

 

The processor being overclocked to 4.4 GHz will surely help the performance of our game servers!

 

Servers

• Garry's Mod Purge. (will wait for later)
• Garry's Mod Murder.
• Garry's Mod Zombie Survival.
• Call of Duty 4 FFA.

 

 

* This is the lineup currently and just a starting lineup. It could change at any time. I will update the post with the GameTracker images when we add the game servers to GameTracker.

 

If this expansion works out, we will start expansions into more games such as Squad, CS:GO, Arma 3, TF2, and other games. It all depends on how things go.

 

United States

We have recently purchased a machine from GMCHosting. We requested a custom build for a lower price since I consider this a testing stage. I don't want to buy their most powerful machine without knowing our servers are going to populate. Anyways, the current machine specs are:

 

• Intel i7-4970K @ 4.0 GHz.
• 16 GBs of DDR3 RAM.
• 500 GBs NVMe.
• One IPv4 address.
• 10 TBs of bandwidth monthly.
• 150 mbps up/down (with 1 gbps burst).
• Located in Dallas, Texas.
• $135.00/m.
• No setup fee.

 

As mentioned above, the machine is located in Dallas, Texas. This will result in lower latency for a majority of the United States players compared to the OVH's data center (Montreal, Canada).

 

If this hosting provider works out, we will likely be upgrading to a future machine with the following specs:

 

• Intel i7-8086K overclocked to 5.2 GHz (six cores).
• 16 GBs of DDR4 RAM.
• 500 GBs NVMe.
• One IPv4 address.
• 10 TBs of bandwidth a month.
• 150 mbps up/down (with 1 gbps burst).
• Located in Dallas, Texas.
• $260.00/m.
• $100 setup fee.

 

This machine is overkill in my opinion, but that's alright! While it may seem a bit expensive, keep in mind it's six cores and overclocked to 5.2 GHz!

 

Servers

• Garry's Mod Purge.
• Garry's Mod Murder.
• Garry's Mod Zombie Survival.
• Garry's Mod CWRP.
• Garry's Mod TTT #2.
• Call of Duty 4 FFA.

 

 

* This is the lineup currently and just a starting lineup. It could change at any time. I will update the post with the GameTracker images when we add the game servers to GameTracker.

 

If this expansion works out, we will start expansions into more games such as Squad (moving server from OVH), CS:GO, Arma 3, TF2, and other games. It all depends on how things go.

 

Overall

I believe this is a great start for us. For example, our Garry's Mod Murder server located in the United Kingdom has been doing VERY well recently! We are reintroducing a lot of older game modes that were loved by many people within the community to see if we can revive them on a different hosting provider. However, we are also in the process of creating servers in newer game modes that have had a lot of success recently. We also plan on getting into many games outside of Garry's Mod if this expansion is successful. I am going to be pushing for Valve to fix their server browser in CS:GO. I am betting that if my suggestion for the CS:GO server browser was implemented and servers that are empty or have a password were removed or moved to the bottom of the server browser, many community servers would start populating again. If this does somehow happen (it would be a miracle considering Valve would need to fix it), we would start a major expansion into CS:GO depending on the results.

 

Keep in mind again, these are just starting lineups for each machine and things will likely change in the near future.

 

Anyways, I am also going to be working on a lot of internal projects in the near future. For example, one of the projects has to do with an internal training system. I believe there are MANY things GFL can improve on internally to make us a stronger community. I also understand I need to complete a lot of projects related to the back end. I will be making an announcement at some point regarding the internal changes and so on. I believe starting with these expansions will highly motivate the people within the community and I.

 

I hope you're happy with this announcement!

 

If you have any questions or concerns, please reply to the thread.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

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[Chef. 275 / 6,985]

This is exciting! Can't wait to play the new servers!

Edited October 1, 2018 by Chef_

[Rick 1,651 / 17,972]

 

 x10

[iamshark 49 / 3,420]

gnarly

[Z1galord 499 / 8,437]

#AllHailThe4thReich

 

Hope to see you all on ZS... try not to die too quickly 

 

Sidenote: US and UK Zombie Survival are still being rebuilt, but are mostly done with the basics.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Z1galord

[BigBthefluffyredneck 83 / 3,027]

I can't wait for Americans to beef with them Teabags across the world. 

[Violator 2,242 / 20,845]

GFL SAVED!!1!!!1

[Akris 806 / 18,197]

2 minutes ago, Violator said:

GFL SAVED!!1!!!1

No

[Akris 806 / 18,197]

35 minutes ago, RickGrimesTM said:

 

 x10

Spunk 

[TheJitFace 699 / 18,162]

nice

[ZombieSurvivalist 99 / 5,250]

Can't wait for ZS to come back 

[Skits 53 / 3,208]

Very Nice

[Qas 110 / 4,140]

OOOOOOOoooo

Can’t wait for purge 

gotta be that hobo king again 

Edited October 2, 2018 by TheRealGayLord

[Winter 1,707 / 25,777]

about time murder came back

 

Also question: Many servers have plans to be added to these new machines, will this impact the other servers such as ImperialRP and Prop Hunt?

Edited October 2, 2018 by Winter

[reppter66 1 / 2,187]

As I said in general chat yesterday im gonna try and be on as much as possible on the zs server cause zs is lit remember kids never cade at best buy the HORRORS  I've seen at best buy

Edited October 2, 2018 by reppter66

[ZombieSurvivalist 99 / 5,250]

18 minutes ago, reppter66 said:

As I said in general chat yesterday im gonna try and be on as much as possible on the zs server cause zs is lit remember kids never cade at best buy the HORRORS  I've seen at best buy

I always cade at manga. 

[reppter66 1 / 2,187]

2 minutes ago, ZombieSurvivalist said:

I always cade at manga. 

true tho

[TheJitFace 699 / 18,162]

18 hours ago, TheRealGayLord said:

OOOOOOOoooo

Can’t wait for purge 

gotta be that hobo king again 

outta here, I am the one who made the hobo hotel. 

[Jesus 90 / 3,841]

ITS BACK BOIS

IM BACK FUCK YEAH

Garry's Mod Purge