Accessing games via Ethernet

[MrPao]

Newbie here, I just wanna ask if it okay and with no issue to access Games via Ethernet/LAN in a Computer Server (like a shared drive over the network). Or any recommendation. Thanks all in advance!

[kelvinhall05]

Not really because even a hard drive is like 160MB/s read, which is 1.28Gb/s, and I doubt you have internet that can do that for a long period of time.

[Bombastinator]

Depends on the definition of “access”.

load? Sure. Stream? Probably. Run? See @kelvinhall05’s post

[Founders]

For much older games it's doable/functional, but for newer games it would be so prohibitively expensive to do it right, it's simply not worth it. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Caroline said:

OP said LAN not internet so that'd be ok as long as the router and wiring are good enough

It sort of depends on what information is being passed.  If it’s say a LAN MMO even Internet would work if the ping was low enough.  Streaming Up/down on the internet almost works. There is too much lag for near instant response except in perfect conditions.  It definitely works with Ethernet though.  UNIX terminals have been doing it for 30 years.  Its whenthere are things like caching and temporary file disk reads and writes that it can bog down badly.

the instance is important.

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, Ehmc130 said:

For much older games it's doable/functional, but for newer games it would be so prohibitively expensive to do it right, it's simply not worth it. 

It’s instance specific I think.  All we know is the word “access” and “ethernet”.  There really isn’t enough information.  What is meant by “access”? What level of connectivity? What program? What kind of ethernet? 

[Founders]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

It’s instance specific I think.  All we know is the word “access” and “ethernet”.  There really isn’t enough information.  What is meant by “access”? What level of connectivity? What program? What kind of ethernet? 

Agreed, OP hasn't provided us with adequate information to provide a specific answer. 

[amdorintel]

1 hour ago, Ehmc130 said:

Agreed, OP hasn't provided us with adequate information to provide a specific answer. 

most never do

they never specify what games exactly

[Bombastinator]

Just now, amdorintel said:

most never do

they never specify what games exactly

True, but this one is even more vague than usual.  Ethernet is an old standard and it runs at various and wildly different speeds.  Anybody remember vampire taps?  That was ethernet.

[amdorintel]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

True, but this one is even more vague than usual.  Ethernet is an old standard and it runs at various and wildly different speeds.  Anybody remember vampire taps?  That was ethernet.

i remember clearly,  the days of loud modems doing their beeps and buzzes and slow as fuck internet

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, amdorintel said:

i remember clearly,  the days of loud modems doing their beeps and buzzes and slow as fuck internet

Vampire taps kinda predate Internet, but that’s a good picture.

[amdorintel]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Vampire taps kinda predate Internet, but that’s a good picture.

i dont get what vampire taps are.

[Bombastinator]

They were pretty wild.  There weren’t any Ethernet jacks. Just this thick cable

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_tap

[amdorintel]

seems like a more business oriented component

 

i remember 10base stuff

sheeesh i am old

[Spotty]

Installing your games on a NAS instead of installing them locally on your system?
As long as you're using gigabit ethernet I don't think it would be a problem. It will be as slow as the weakest link in the chain, which would usually be your router or ethernet connection. As long as it is gigabit you should see sequential speeds in the region of 100-120MB/s which isn't too much of a drop from the 120-160MB/s you would expect from a desktop hard drive. As long as it's a wired connection (for stability) then I think it would be fine. Wireless might be a different story if the connection is prone to dropping out or poor speed, your experience may vary depending on the reliability and speed of the wifi.

If possible keep your favourite games that you play the most on the local machine but other games you play occasionally should be fine on a NAS.

I'm planning on setting up so my games run off my NAS once I get around to buying more HDDs for it (and probably upgrading the NAS). Somehow I've almost filled up my 6TB games drive and a 500GB games SSD  

[Bombastinator]

12 hours ago, amdorintel said:

seems like a more business oriented component

 

i remember 10base stuff

sheeesh i am old

Yeah, business and academia.  10baseT came later

[Mira Yurizaki]

16 hours ago, MrPao said:

Newbie here, I just wanna ask if it okay and with no issue to access Games via Ethernet/LAN in a Computer Server (like a shared drive over the network). Or any recommendation. Thanks all in advance!

I've done this before using my NAS, mapping the network drive to a letter, and then pointing either the game launcher (e.g., Steam) to it or making a symbolic link. However, if multiple computers are pointing to the same network store, it may worsen loading performance for everyone.

 

Performance otherwise feels the same as running it locally on gigabit Ethernet. I've even done it over 802.11ac and it felt mildly worse. 802.11n is where things get bad, at least if you're using the base performance of it. Also, open world games may not have much of an impact to performance. One of the games I used to test this with was GTA V. Even when things were getting bad at 802.11n, the game still chugged along, albeit with parts of the world missing.

[Ertman]

Well, I figure if we are comparing it to local spinning hard disk, it could increase load times a small bit and make response times a bit slower, but it should work ok. So I guess a game that doesn't stream data while playing would be less problematic. Anecdotally, I have also done this before and I did find the difference noticeable but also tolerable.

 

I think the a bigger difference would be seen if using an SSD.

[tech.guru]

if you want to access a disk over Ethernet this has been a thousand times already inside the enterprise.

you would use iscsi to do this. however, you usually would have a separate storage network.

 

without a seperate network, your regular traffic can cause network congestion which would slow down accessing your disk.. which would be a very bad thing.

[tech.guru]

if your going to be accessing game files using an SMB server... ensure you have your smb client system is configured with enough memory so the operating system can cache the files and not have to repeatably request the same files over the network.  game assets are notoriously large so caching these in memory may require a sizable ram boost.

[Bombastinator]

Haven’t seen a reply or reaction from the OP yet.  I don’t know if s/he is even reading this.

[louij2]

Just been thinking to do this with my UNRAID NAS, I have full 10Gbps networking through SFP+, however all the games will be stored on platter drives, which will only allow for 100MB/s-120MB/s total speeds on either 5400rpm/7200rpm.