I dont know how much it would cost to set up servers..... but I had set up a server at Dell.
2x Intel Xeon 2.66GHz, with 16GB Ram and 76GB Harddrives with 15.000 RPM.... 8500$
I dont know how many SOE does needs for one "Server" (Vector). And I dont know how much Traffic one server produces in a month..... but I had calculatet that soe recives every month 450.000$.... there is another thread with the question where all the money goes to.....
But I have another example.... there is a game called Anarchy Online, they have only 10.000 Members, MxO has 30.000 Members (
Source). But Anarchy Online has a an American Server, an European Server and an German Server.... and now, you can play it for free, without the extansions, but you can play it to lvl200 for nothing and on an european server and they have only 1/3 of players as mxo does has....
The main question about the server problem is realy "What do soe with the money from the mxo costumers?"
The other thing..... with ISDN..... I have an 4MBit connection... I had choose this one to have fast downloads and not like to the old ISDN times where I had got files only with 8 or 16Kbit/s down

But I can ask my provider for the extrem fast jump from Frankfort to the mxo servers..... I will inform you....
Fastpath..... I had asked that again... I think so.... You have 2 methods with an internet connection, Fastpath and Interleaving.
Interleaving grants you a good download, it prooves all packages that goes from the server to your computer, so it produce a bit more lag.
Fastpath dont have this checkup for the downloaded files, so will have a faster ping in games but with bigger files it could happen that there will be an error in the download..... and the other bad thing is, it costs extra money to switch from interleaving to fastpath and back.
I am wondering my self that this is realy known here in germany, every hardcore gamer know what fastpath and interleaving is..... there is an article at wikipedia.de but there is no article at wikipedia.com
But I think you do know now what Interleaving is
I am realy anxois of your answers