[SOLVED]What is the "master server"?

What is the master server? Is it a server that unity hosts or something?How does it work?
I don't need code or anything, I just want to know what it is, how it works and stuff like that.
If it isn't hosted by anything how on earth do people connect to it to see a game list?

I like knowing about the things I work with and I could not find anything about this!

 

The master server just tells clients which servers are available to play games on.

There are some guys running master servers around here, or alternatively you can run your own master server, which involves either downloading the beta master server source code and compiling it yourself, or finding one that has already been compiled.

I did eventually manage to download the project and get it compiling under Visual Studio 2008, with some minor changes, and I use it for tests... but really I think I'd need to put some effort in at a later stage to customize it to my own needs.

Honestly it's all a little hazy, when I read the documentation about it my expectation was that there would be a nice master server console that I could run, rather than a console application that I had to compile myself.

That said, somewhere there used to be a post where someone had compiled it to run as a windows service... but I don't particularly like running something that isn't endorsed by Unity. It could be unstable, won't be supported, and who knows what kind of spyware could be embedded (not an accusation! just a note to be wary).

I don't know about anyone else's experience but whenever I run a multiplayer unity game on the web my Anti-Virus goes wild with intrusion attempts and I'm not sure how many of those are valid NAT punch-through attempts, or if it's something more funky.

 

I see, so where do I get this code?
Do I need a windows server for it? or would it work on linux? How would I set it up on the server?

 

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/net-MasterServerBuild.html

http://unity3d.com/master-server/index.html

Also there's a sticky thread right at the top of this forum, where people discuss some of the issues with it.

And although it says that you can only build it with VS2003 I did manage to get it building on VS2008 with some minor changes.

There is a makefile for both linux and macOS.

 

Thanks a lot.

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