The servers.dat file is used by both CTP and CTP2 to connect to the game servers around the world. They are the IP addresses of the game servers. When you connect to the server system using the game, it picks up a listing of current good servers and adds new ones to the dat file. The problem with the servers.dat file included on the game CD is that the two servers listed, activision.us1 and activision.uk, are no longer active or do not respond with updated server listings. The game will keep looking for those servers and will not update until it connects to a server listed in the dat. So, players who want to play online must get a server.dat file from a player who has connected recently so that there is at least one active server in the dat file. This file is an one such file of this and will be kept up-to-date.