Ok,
I've recently got myself a dedicated in house cod2 server set up and i've seen a few people asking for tutorials and such on the subject.
So if it pleases the admins i'd like to take a pop at feeling this need...

Types of servers
Now the first thing you need to know (and im gonna start from the basics) is the different ways there is to create a server.
This cheapest, and in some ways easiest is to set the server up yourself and host it from home (or wherever you normally play). The pro's of this method is that you can get it up and running very cheaply and quickly and have complete control over what goes on.

The more common and more efficient way of doing it is by renting a server from a company that specialises in gaming servers. www.jolt.co.uk is a popular british choice.

to be continued...

if you plump for the rentable type then most of this will already be done for you, but for those that wish to set one up in house... read on.


Hardware
There is really only one main deciding factor when actually building your own server. How many players do you wish to host? The more you have the more computer power you'll need to process all the info needed to serve the game.

If you look on rentable server sites you'll see that they offer more professional options that are high end machines specially designed for the task. Now unless you have the money or means to build one of these you can get away with setting one up relatively cheaply.

For example the one i use is just a 1.6ghz 256meg headless terminal i administer via rdp.

The main constraint your likely to face when setting up the server is your bandwidth.
This is the measure of speed of your internet connection to and from your server.
As most people will be running off broadband the download bandwidth won't be too much of a problem, its the upload you'll need to concentrate on.
If you have a 2.2meg line your likely to have around 280kb upload (this is all measured in bits per second but i'll explain that in a moment).
This isn't ideal but it will allow you to host a moderately sized server.

Now your probably wondering... Just exactly how many players can an Xkbps line handle? well the equation is actually quite simple.

UploadSpeed / 8 / Rate = how many clients you can host.

Now the upload speed must be in bits so for a 2.2 meg line it would be around 280,000 and then you divide it by 8 to return the byte figure (there are 8 bits in a byte) then finally divide it by the Rate of your server which is the rate (in memory) that your clients update your server. The higher the rates the smoother the game for the clients.
This will return the golden figure of how many players you can support, the trick is to tweak the rates so that you can handle the load being sent and received.

I remember I created a tutorial for this a while ago.. my searched can't find it though :(

can never have too much help!

Well, i have bad connection ( 512 kbps)...

And it seems that i wont get new one in short period of time...

So...My speed is obviously too small to run a server right?

You could run a server with that connection, however I wouldn't recommend it. It's far too slow for more than 1 player to play properly.