Who is a good host for a realtime TCP/IP game server?

Question

I a trying to set up a real time game server that runs a game I am writing as a C# .NET 3.5 service. The game is similar to classic pong so I need to send real time feedback to both clients through a persistent socket connect to the server.

This is an example of how it is coded. http://www.codeproject.com/kb/IP/socketsByBobJanova.aspx

Does anyone know of any hosting services that can support this? I am only concerned with getting an reasonably priced host that I can test in for now.

Answer 1

Ok, here is a shot as an answer other then just a simple hosting company. I am not sure of your means, but what I did was pay about $300 a month for a 1/4 rack colocation in Chicago, IL. For that I get all the redundant power and bandwidth I need (29Mb up, 72Mb down normally). I then went on EBay and got myself a couple Dell PowerEdge 2850 Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 4GB RAM, 3x73GB 15k RPM RAID for about $350 each. Put them all in, and boom, instant data-center.

I figure it took me about 15-20 hours to setup everything, $1000 in hardware, and $300 a month in colo fees. So it is not for everyone, but for the small business that needs control of their servers, but need more performance/reliability then hosted, it is not a bad option.