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First, make sure you know about how many people you're going to have. Do extensive work to make sure you have enough power circuits in order to pull this off. Nothing will make the LAN party suck more than having the nth person plug in and overdraw the circuit.
Games: Make sure that you have a centralized file share with all of the latest updates for any game you anticipate people may play. If you don't care about being legal, ISOs are also helpful, though it's a fast way to get yourself in trouble if someone tells the BSA.
Food and Drink: See about collecting money from everyone to order pizza, have a large supply of soda, easily accessible bathrooms, enough tables and chairs, snack food (chips, cookies, etc.).
Network equipment: With up to 8 people, a hub is fine. After that, you will need a switch, otherwise people will start having lots of network congestion. These can get expensive, so if possible have people bring their own or borrow some from work. Also have lots of Cat5 network cable.
If at all possible, try to tell people not to do file sharing across the network, as I was at one LAN party, back a year ago, when LOTR first came out online in good copy. Suddenly, half of the people dropped out of the Q3 game we were playing and walked over and started watching it. Pissed me the fuck off.
Depending upon how large it is, there's more advice I can give you. About how many people were you expecting?
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Eat antimatter, Posleen-boy!
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