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Counter-Strike 1.6

FastDL configuration for CS 1.6

Speed up map, sound and model downloads for joining players with HTTP-based FastDL on a separate WingNode endpoint.

By default the game engine downloads custom maps and resources at painfully slow UDP speeds. FastDL offloads those downloads to a standard HTTP server, compressing the experience from minutes to seconds.

How it works

The server tells the client: "If you need de_custom.bsp, fetch it from http://fastdl.example.com/maps/de_custom.bsp.bz2." The client downloads over HTTP at full bandwidth, decompresses and joins.

WingNode FastDL

WingNode offers a FastDL Hosting product with HTTP delivery from SSD storage. Configure it in server.cfg:

sv_downloadurl "http://fastdl.wingnode.com/yourserver/"\nsv_allowdownload 1\nsv_allowupload 0

Preparing content

  1. BZ2-compress maps: bzip2 -k de_custom.bsp (keep original).
  2. Upload de_custom.bsp.bz2 to the FastDL root under /maps/.
  3. Mirror the folder structure your server expects: maps/, sound/, models/, sprites/, gfx/.

Testing

Clear a test client's cstrike/downloads/ folder and join. Watch the download progress — a few MB should complete in seconds.

Common mistakes

  • Forgetting to upload the BZ2 AND original (clients with old engines need one or the other).
  • Wrong case sensitivity — Linux hosts are case-sensitive. De_Custom.bsp ≠ de_custom.bsp.
  • Serving with text/html MIME instead of application/octet-stream — use our default Apache config.