Multiple computer cd image mounts from single server

[philgolian]

i work at an internet cafe and am currently working on making a server, in which game cd's are imaged and stored on. Using daemon tools and daemon script, i have setup multiple computers to automatically mount and load a game when a user fires up a single shortcut. However, it seems that when multiple computer maybe assessing the images, the process is slowed down and fails to mount the image before the application is launched. Are there ways to decrease this problem. I also would like pointers for getting the server to be able to handle network trafic better. The up/down spped of the computer on the LAN seems slower than normal. ( 20 minutes to transfer 2 gigs )

System specs -
Athlon 1.4
asus a7v266
ata 100 or 133 hdd
512mb 2700
random NIC
Windows XP SP2

 

[Gunter]

Might I suggest to add a delay timer, and create a little DOS Window that says "Launching..." and make it pause for 20-30 seconds then launch after that.

As far as network traffic, make sure any unneccary protocols arent running, i.e IPX, etc. they tend to cause alot of network traffic.

To ensure the bottleneck is not at the server, look into Windows Server OS, which has NIC Load Balancing, so as not to flood one NIC with keepalives.

Also, I assume you are already running 100base, look into Gigabit?

You could also try to create multiple copies of the image files, to make sure that Daemon-Tools isnt being greedy and locking the file or anything like that.

Maybe have 5-10 machines mount on one file, then the 5-10 more mount somewhere else on the drive.

 

[philgolian]

thanks for the tips, i already put a new NIC in the computer and its working better. However yesterday while i was trying to get this to work with warcraft 3 i discovered that blizzard doesent like people who mount their games. i cant get wc3 to run without a cd like i used to be able to do. infact im running the same software as i did over a year ago, but blizzard has patched wc3 to not allow mounted images to be able to start the game. since wc3 is the game i was mainly going to use the system for, it looks like i dont have the same problem anymore. but it works great for bf2- i use a "mini-image" that is less than a MB and i couldnt be happier with the way it is working.

let me know if you have a fix to the wc3 image problem. i have already tried .cue and .mds image thingers