The game server software is written in Java for stability, maintainability, security and performance. PostgreSQL has been chosen as our database software for its stability, integrity, scalability and openness. The back office interface "LiME" is written in PHP.
Performance and scalability
The server software is based on a "few-threaded" design to avoid thread starvation and race conditions. Clients are handled in a round-robin fashion, guaranteeing that all clients get a fair time slice and equally fast response even under heavy loads.
In the case of server overload the server will scale down performance evenly for all clients who will experience the same increase in latency. The increased latency will make the games take longer and make the games feel a bit sluggish, but won't affect the outcome of the games since the server is aware of its own latency and takes it into account when handling timeouts.
Stability
The choice of Java as the language and careful programming with proper use of exception handling has made The Cybertech game server exceptionally stable, with no unscheduled downtime for more than three years.
All hardware in use has a high level of redundancy with redundant, hot-swappable components and a surveillance system based on Nagios monitors the health of all our servers, proxies and connections. In case of irregularities an alarm is immediately sent by email and SMS to all responsible technicians.
The content of the database is replicated to a secondary database with latency less than 10 seconds using Slony. An offsite backup of the database is taken daily.
All servers are placed in a state-of-the-art server hall with redundant power, Internet connections, cooling etc. The personnel of the server hall is highly trained and trusted.
Random Number Generator and Card Shuffling
The random number generator (RNG) is state of the art and uses specific hardware to continuously seed a pseudo random generator (PRNG) of our own design and guarantees an unpredictable and balanced flow of randomness for shuffling the cards. The RNG has been certified by Statens Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium (SKL), which is the Swedish government agency for Forensic Science.
Cards are shuffled using a proven, well-known, published algorithm that has no bias. All decks of cards are shuffled using the same RNG.