This topic has evolved into an area that I have been curious about for several years. I had a chance to spend a bit of time with the former head of EQ Customer Support and while he was forthcoming on many things abou the game - he was very tight-lipped about these details.

What is the physical architecture of an EQ server?

I realize several things (these are guesses btw):

1. Multiple computers make up a "server". I suspect that these are not all the same.

2. A "zone" runs on a computer as a task. Probably several zones on a computer - and the mapping of zones to computers is probably very flexible.

3. I think they run linux or a unix variant. And I was told the database is homegrown.

Ratt's comment sparked an interest. He concluded that compressing packets for 2000 users would be quite a load on the server. From that I am concluding that he feels all the packet traffic for a "EQ server (ie: several computers)" is routed to a single machine. I suspect that your closeness to the packet mechanisms give you some valid reasons to conclude this structure. I would have guessed each zone communicated to "its" users.

The notion that they might be consolidating the IO for a server to one machine is interesting. I would suggest that perhaps the individual computers forward compressed packets - thus distributing the load. The workload on any computer would be the people in the zones it runs. Certainly thats not 2000 people.

Note: I understand what servers are - and have tried to stay away from that term to avoid confusion with the logical notion of an EQ server.