LAN party
 

Me and my friend are planning on hosting one but we have no idea what we are supposed to have to make it run smoothly and not have to run out in the middle of it to Best Buy to get something we forgot to buy. Can anyone tell me what is need for one of these?

A big enough hub and crossover cables.

Pizza, lots of pop, chips, pretzels, dip....oh yeah, and a big hub and crossover cables ;)

big huge SWITCH (not hub)
plenty of Cat5 cable, the ability to make cables
make sure you have enough power outlets, and only a few computers per outlet
good air conditioning/house fans is a must
have a few backup computers
make sure everyone brings their software, computers have a habit of getting FUBAR'd at LANs for some reason
seats for everyone of course
munchies.. it's a party after all
and make sure SOMEONE at the party is a networking expert

ahh.. the ol' days of LAN parties

me and a couple of friends were thinking about having a lan party (we're all teen's, so not much $$).

any way that we can all bring our routers and hook 'em up to lan?

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?

Yeah we have the dame problem as The_Dude. We can't spend that much money on this and good chance if only for under 8 people what do you suggest for that?

We're expecting to have at most 4 people.

With under 8 people, I'd say just bring along hubs and switches (your "4-port Cable/DSL routers" also function as switches, with a configuration change, I think). Make sure you've got enough patch cable (not crossover - no idea why hrdwareguy mentioned that).

You shouldn't have too big of a problem. If you've got any specific stuff you want advice about, feel free to ask. I help run a 40-person LAN party about once every two or three months, so I've got some experience.

8/4 ppl should be no problem, the only suggestion i have is to use heavy duty extension cords if you get too many computers on one household circuit, then you wont be playing much. No daisychaining! (hooking a surge protector into another surge protector)

Ideally, run the extension cords to several different rooms, so you can draw from multiple circuits and (hopefully) not blow anything.

Again, power is something you really need to be paranoid about.

wtf...You dont need crossover cables.

You need a switch. Size depending on how many people. Cable making is easy, but buying my crimpers is $45 >_< And 4 of us own a pair :D


You need power strips, Cat5, and a switch

Our current LAN has gone on for about 2.5 months now and we're probably gonna break it up soon.

If you're thinking about mini-lans, routers will work. At the current LAN, we have 10 computers up. Mine was born here a couple weeks ago, and we're gonna deliver another one later tonight. This summer we've built about 5 computers for misc people.

Thanks guys if I have any more questions I'll ask.

Would I be able to run this for no more then 4 people on a router?

Sure, you can, if you have only 4 people, use your cable modem router or whatever to hook up everyone. More than that and you just start daisy chaining appliances, though you'll get some latency with the increased number of layers between the computers and the top-level switch.

If you lagged, it's less than 10 milliseconds and you wouldn't even notice it.


Also another good rule of LAN: BAN FILESHARING TO WHEN EVERONE IS ASLEEP OR BAN IT ALL TOGETHER!! :P

You would not believe how many times my buddies system up and dies as soon as it walks into the LAN party's room.

Ideally ban it completely, but that's pretty hard to enforce.

One very sweet setup that my friends and I are trying to configure for the future is as follows:

Dedicated server machine hooked up to a Cisco switch (with support for 10+ VLANs). When you first hook into the network, you load to VLAN 0 - you're given a webpage that asks you to select what you want to do (file share, play game X, play game Y, play game Z, and so on). Given your option, it configures the switch so that you're placed on the appropriate VLAN.

When you get tired of that specific activity, you return to the webpage, tell it what you want to do next, and move to that VLAN. This provides a very nice way of segmenting broadcast domains so that the games and file sharing don't fuck with one another, while allowing people a little more freedom.

Sadly, we don't quite have the money for the require Cisco hardware (though 3 of us are CCNA certified and I'm on my way, we may be able to borrow some through our contacts. It'd be fun to try).

No kidding - I've lost count of the number of PCs that undergo emergency surgery as soon as they enter the door of the outbuilding where we do our larger LAN parties.

Some of the funniest memories, though, are restoring to using in-game chat to attract the attention of the guy sitting right next to me, as his noise-cancellation headphones + loud music drowned me out, as well as my friend who showed up having just recieved his computer parts from Newegg an hour and a half before the LAN party.

So we immediately build his system, passed him a WinXP CD, and went back to gaming. Fun times, having a bunch of guys sitting around a computer case, building it, swapping stories, and then spending several hours playing games.

Let's see...make sure to have a cubic asslode of cat 5 cable. Crossover isn't necessary. If you're having more than 10 people, I'd make sure to have a switch. Make sure no one is connected to file-sharing programs, and try to agree with everyone on not using the network for anything but gaming. Even the slightest transfer will make networked games lag to hell.

Me and my friends usually have LAN's consisting of 10-20 people. When it gets above 15, the power goes out about once per night. Get used to it! The more surge protectors the better.

Make sure everyone has a network friendly OS. Win XP does the job VERY nicely. Win 98, ME, and even 2000 give lots of problems when trying to connect to a lot of other people. Again, I suggest everyone have Win XP Pro installed. Makes things a lot easier.

Other than that, just ram all of the cat 5 cables leading from the PCs all into a central hub or switch. Turn on the PCs, have someone start a server, and there ya go!

One last thing: make sure everyone has the same version of the same games installed prior to the LAN. That can get very confusing and boring. Waiting on people to install games gets really old, especially if there's a waiting list.

-Lasereth

Last but not least....DON"T FORGET THE GAME CD's!!! Unless you all have NO-CD patches.

Heh, we'll either pass around 1 disc or burn a bunch. We've got like 5 real broodwar discs and maybe 12 burned ones floating around.

Pragma: Just gotta study a little more to get my CCNA too :D

Does that usually happen? People forget to bring games?

Remember Circuit City has a 30 day 'no questions asked' return policy... and they sell SOHO switches...

what you do with those memories is up to you...

Yeah we were all thinking about that but we found a router that will do without the hassle of driving for an hour to Circuit City.

Why exactly does this happen to everyone at the 5 or 6 mini-lans (no more than 8) someone's comp is always messed, whether it be their power supply, os, or spyware/virus ridden something goes wrong. The funny thing is that my comp is always fine, not ever even the slightest problem.

To get back to the subject the number one thing that someone else said was to make sure everyone has the same versions of the games. It is such a pain to have to reinstall your game just because the other dumbasses never patched but you did, errr Generals :p

And for filesharing to solver it I just bring a couple of my binders and say here go at it, have fun.

Guide if you want it... http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/howtolanparty/

Not that they forget to bring them, but along the lines of "Oh, uh, yea, I own that game - I just forgot to bring it. Do you mind if I burn a copy of the CD and write down your CD key?"

One thing everyone forgot to mention is virus scanning!

I went to a LAN once and someone had KLEZ or some stupid shit and all of a sudden about 30 people all jumped up when the virus triggered their anti-virus. The admins immediately shut down the network and everyone had to show a clean virus scan screen. Then they kicked out anyone who was infected.

I love highly moderated LANs.

Okay some simple ground rules for smaller ones and bigger. Halx is right...SWITCH not hub. Try to start it earlier in the afternoon rather than later as anything that can go wrong probably will. Also early starts lets you work out kinks. First off BAN speakers...a friend of mine always brings them and I wanna kill him. Secondly if its just friends try to focus on playing games because it pisses me off if I lug my computer around to just watch TV. Food...proper power...and yeah AC is very good.

Oh yes, I forgot about headphones, you want to stress that everybody bring headphones!

I also forgot to mention another thing that people have gone over - no need to BUY a switch. Just *borrow* one from an electronics store with a return policy.

This is also very important. We usually try to start around 12:30 - 1pm. Almost NO gaming happens before 3 or so. A number of us more hardcore folks show up early and we setup. We start getting everyone up on current patches, and just fuck around with our systems. share files, bullshit etc....

Agreed, juanvaldes. At our LAN parties, normally those of us that run the place (myself and a few friends) show up around 8, run all of the cables, set up the power, make sure that our servers are functional. Doors open to everyone else around 10 or 11, and then we play until 10 at night (we've gotta be out of the building by 11).

Even when we do a smaller LAN party at someone's house, there's inevitably an hour or two setup time, because things will go wrong.

Well our LAN of 2.5 months just broke up last night. :D

I dont think speakers should be banned, but you should use headphones. We use speakers if we all gather around someone's computer to watch a funny clip. We usually dont mind some people's speakers either if they're playing the same game or listening to music we dont like. But most of us use headphones out of decency.

The REAL question here is where hrdwareguy got the idea for "Crossover cables". wtf?

Well as stated already the early start is key because you want to get situated and get everything taken care of. ONe to many times have friends of mine just started out late and we end up only getting a few hours of good gaming before its already 6 in the morning. I still think that everyone should have headphones except maybe the if a person is hosting it at his home.

Good Idea on that "borrowing" halx

well, if the pc's have internet connection sharing....(isnt that the reason or am i way off)

Nah.

If you connect through someone's pc, it just uses the same patch cable to go through the switch...unless you just have 2 pcs or a token ring
>_<

you would also need a crossover if the switch or hub does not have a uplink port or a MDI/MDIX button. Many older managed switches do not have this and to link a switch into another switch or router then you would need a crossover cable.. it's not a bad idea to have one or have the ability to make one just in case.. . also, dont forget to brush up on your smack talk.. :-)