It will be neccesary for us to run a central server, however the usage of this server should be very low. This would be used to store all of the Agent profiles - status, money, gateway specs etc.

The central Database could also be used to store a list of game Servers, and their locations. ie a central database.

This would most likely be some kind of database system, with a security layer on top. This system would not be accessable from within Uplink Online - we don't want that kind of cheating taking place within the game.

Clients will connect to this Central Server when they first start up. The player will then log in, and the player character will be accessed from the database. The client is then free to connect into Uplink Online and begin play.

There are a number of problem with this which have not yet been resolved. There is a major redundancy problem (if this database goes down, the whole Uplink Online sysem goes with it - single point of failure). Also the bandwidth usage and maintainance costs could be very high for us.