You are rather undescriptive. Please elaborate:

• What games are you planning to run? You need to choose specific games, and usually each game comes with its own server software, if any.
• What are the specs on your computer? If you're hoping to host a lot of people, it has to be able to handle such a volume.
• What kind of bandwidth do you have from your ISP? Make sure your upload speed is adequete to be able to keep lag at a minimum.

Hope this helps

as joeprogrammer said it depends in four things Game's Required Software, ISP Upoload Bandwith, If your ISP provideds direct conection to the internet (Public IP) and your computer specs.
Check first your ISP spects so you dont waste time since ive got a good speed but no public IP, one IP becomes shared to several members so I cant setup any kind of server. Hate that about my isp but in here theres no option of choosing another ISP so I recommend you to check that first.

The games to be played are battlefield 2+ mods and battlefield vietnam
mods.I dont want the server for online play its for lan coop play.The pc is a dell 2.4ghz and it will be running through a 16 channel 1Gb router .the dell will be used as the host setup.

hope this helps. thanks for your time and replies. DT

I dunno battlefield, but yes then it can be used a server for something like a LAN party hhehe... just look for how to setup a battlefield server because ive never play that game neither now about their servers.

That should work excellent. You'll need to start off by downloading the Battlefield 2 server software. It must be very easy to setup the server using the server software, as all the online guides I found seemed to be for setting up Linux Battlefied servers.

I dd find a guide to run the server as a Windows service, which is not the same as what you normally do. Running the Battlefield server as a service means that it will start automatically when Windows starts, and run in the background. Only follow this guide if this is what you want:
http://forums.firedaemon.com/viewtopic.php?t=19

Hope this helps

cheers for the help ,have a good new year : party hard

thanks DT