About us
meatfactory.net is a community of computer enthusiasts, who all share the same interest in their collective hobby: online multiplayer gaming. All this started with the [TFB]-Clan, who have been organising LAN parties for 13 years, but also started playing online since 1999, when broadband internet connections became widely available. Today our servers in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, attract hundreds of gamers from all over Europe every day, who are also active in our forums, teamspeak and irc channel.
Philosophy
Our aim is to provide the best possible gaming experience for various game titles which offer a decent multiplayer mode. After playing on several servers provided by different hosts, clans or communities, we discovered that the only way to play games according to our own ideas of what multiplayer online gaming should be like, was to operate our own game servers, individually configured to meet our personal needs.
This concept was realized in several game servers and it turned out to be really successful. Today our servers attract hundreds of players from all over Europe every day. The meatfactory.net gameserver community is the communication platform where all these players can meet and get to know each other in order to exchange ideas and experiences about gaming and other topics among each other.
This concept was realized in several game servers and it turned out to be really successful. Today our servers attract hundreds of players from all over Europe every day. The meatfactory.net gameserver community is the communication platform where all these players can meet and get to know each other in order to exchange ideas and experiences about gaming and other topics among each other.
Technology
This community is powered by the most sophisticated and technologically advanced equipment available on the market. Our current server "Core" is based on Intel's new Core™ microarchitecture. Powered by two 64-bit Dual-Core Intel Xeon® DP 5160 processors clocked at 3.0 Ghz and 4 gigabytes of quad channel DDR2 memory, this server delivers a maximum level of performance, power-efficiency and reliability.
Apart from using high end hardware equipment one of the most important issues for a sucessful gameserver operation is a reliable high quality internet connection. The meatfactory.net gameservers are connected to the internet via a multi-carrier uplink to ensure low latency connections and the best possible gaming experience for everyone.
Our housing partners at Link11 provide their own full redundant ip backbone in Frankfurt am Main. This IPv6-ready backbone is connected to Europe's leading Internet Exchanges (IX) and several international carriers and is designed to run at a maximum speed of 10 GBits per second. The meatfactory.net gameservers have a single separate 1 GBits per second uplink to this backbone for the gameserver and webserver traffic.
History
The people behind this community have a long history of multiplayer gaming and have gathered a lot of experience in playing all types and genres of games on different platforms. In fact some of us have been playing computer games for more than 10 years now and still are not tired of continuing this exciting hobby.All this started with the [TFB]-Clan, who have been organising LAN parties since 1995 but also started playing online in 2000, when broadband internet connections became widely available. All our gameservers still carry the [TFB] tag in their name.
1995
A few people started organizing LAN parties with their newly aquired Realtek 8019 ISA NICs and a 10 Mbit BNC chain. The games played were DOOM, DOOMII, Duke Nukem 3D and the original Command & Conquer.
1997
The network was upgraded with Realtek 8129 PCI NICs for 100 Mbit connections with Cat-5 cables and switches. Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike beta3 and the first two Quake titles were added to the games portfolio.
2000
Some of those LAN gamers started playing online via the first ADSL broadband connections available. The first online games played were Counter-Strike 1.0, Quake III, Unreal Tournament and the UT based Tactical Ops modification.
2001
The first server went online powered by a Pentium3 700MHz with 256 MB SD RAM. The first public [TFB]Meatfactory for Counter-Strike 1.3 was created. The first website with just a few static html pages was made and published under the "fickbu.de" label - hence the [TFB] tag which was short for Team Fickbu.de. The first TeamSpeak server was also established.
2002
The Pentium3 700MHz was still providing the few services we offered. The [TFB]Meatfactory was updated to Counter-Strike 1.4 and later version 1.5.
2003
The server hardware was upgraded with a Pentium4 HT 2.6GHz and 1GB DDR RAM. Our [TFB]Meatfactory was updated to Counter-Strike 1.6 and Steam. The website was upgraded with a Postnuke CMS and phpBB forums.
2004
The hardware was again upgraded with a Sun Microsystems V20z server powered by two AMD Opteron CPUs at 1.8GHz and 2GB DDR RAM. This server became famous as "The Sun". The website moved to "meatfactory.net". The portal website was upgraded to Mambo CMS. The forums, the TeamSpeak and Counter-Strike 1.6 revieved some minor upgrades. The public [TFB]Meatfactory for Counter-Strike:Source went online on the first day of the public beta phase.
2005
A second Sun Microsystems V20z was added powered by two AMD Opteron CPUs at 2.2GHz and 2GB DDR RAM. As is became the "Sun's" nearest neighbor in the 19 inch rack, we named it "Mercury". Both servers provided all web services as well as TeamSpeak and several game servers for Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike:Source, Quake 4, Desert Combat and later Battlefield 2. The "Meatfreaks Clan" was founded and war servers were installed for online matches.
2006
The two Sun Microsystems V20z were still running all our services. The portal website was upgraded to Joomla CMS and our forums were upgraded to vBulletin.
2007
Both Sun servers were replaced with “Core” which is powered by two Intel Xeon DP 5160 CPUs and 4GB DDR2 RAM. All services are now provided by a single server. This includes the portal, forums, TeamSpeak and all gameservers.
2008
The "Core" server was moved to a new colocation facility within Frankfurt am Main and also upgraded to a single separate 1 GBits per second network uplink to the multicarrier backbone. The forums were upgraded to phpBB 3.x. All server and clan activities are now branded "meatfactory.net - The Gameserver Community" taking place over the obsolete clan structures.
