FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

so im going to get my server up soon, but it wouldnt be up 24/7... so i was thinking - a dedicated server is just a pc, thats open 24/7 hosting a game server, right? so i should make one... and also, i should host servers for others as well, for a price ofcourse, but then i was thinking - what pc is great for that... any suggestions? PS. please as cheap as possible... thank you =)

People will just rent a VPS/dedicated server from a random server host if they want a 24/7 server. Internet connection speed in datacenters is much faster than in your house most of the time. ;)

500kb/s-1mb/s slow??? Ok xD btw, i would rent them out much cheaper xD

I used to run a 24/7 server over a really slow (had to wait for low-res Youtube videos to buffer) DSL connection without any problems. The server ran fine on an old Pentium 4. You really don't need that much speed or power for a minetest server.

Yeah that's too slow especially if you want to host multiple games. And your upload speed is going to be the bottleneck if your package is 1mb down your upload is probably 256kb maybe 512kb. For every chunk update or player movement you have to send ( upload ) that information to everybody who is connected.

Bandwidth is key issue it seems. During some testing I've done it seems a 1-2GHz cpu runs a headless minetest server with a butt load of mods fairly easily. However you need some decent bandwidth to support a lot of players. Typical home cable net might can do 2-5 players.

Maybe there could be improvements in bandwidth usage in minetest to help this issue?

well minetest should, for starters, get rid of that lag somehow...
than it wouldnt need that much...
cause minecraft servers hold up to 200 people without any lag...
even i hosted a minetest server before i started playing minetest...
on the same PC, with the same connection...
the maximum of players was still 200, but it started lagging in about 100-150 players or so...