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description: Tweaks and tricks to improve both your experience in hosting and others' in playing on your server
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# Best practices


{% hint style="info" %}
TODO: If you have experience in hosting Northstar servers and want to share your knowledge, please open a [pull request](https://github.com/R2Northstar/NorthstarWiki/pulls).
{% endhint %}

## Minimum requirements

The current minimum requirements are as follows:

**Requirements per server:**

- 5GB free disk space (+3 GB if you're on windows due to origin and deps)
- 3+ cores (2 might work, though)
- 6GB+ total memory (RAM or swap will do) 
- Windows 8.1 (and built-in WARP [use `-softwared3d11`] or a graphics card) + or wine 6.0.0+ (and dxvk+lavapipe+x11, wined3d+llvmpipe+x11, or a working graphics setup with dxvk or llvmpipe) (see https://git.io/JyrOR for wine details)


**Per instance:**

- 2GB RAM (this is what's actually used; it does drop to ~1.2GB after a bit)
- 15 Mbps network upload, but 10 is workable, 25 if you want to avoid players getting disconnected when going back to the lobby after a match


**Note:** It is recommended to surpass the listed requirements. Currently the number of available servers covers the daily playerbase more than enough. If you're planning to host public servers for the community it is therefore recommended to either fill a niche (like a gamemode that is so popular that all existing servers are full) or provide a better service than existing hosts (less lag, more stable, etc.).