My 1st LAN party!! wooooo

[Scratchy]

Hi there, my name is adam and in a weeks time i will be having a lan party with 8 of my mates. There will be 4 comps in two rooms as shown in diagram.

- the first thing i thaught was that i would need an 8 port hub, 8 comps , 8 ports. Then i thaught some more. If i had two rooms i am gonna gave to run a heck or alot of cable! so i ask you this:
Can i buy two 5 port hubs and link them AND have adedicated machine as a server? If your intrested we will be playing CS :P

Thankyou for any responce and any information on anything you think ive missed, as it is greatly appreciated!

Adamhttp://www.theforumisdown.com/uploadfiles/1203/lanparteee.JPG

[su root]

Use switches, if you can. I would recommend getting one 5-port switch, and one 8-port switch. That will give you 13 ports.. 2 will be used to connect the two switches, which leaves 11, including 1 for your server, 8 for your friends, and 2 for an internet connection, or anyone else that stops by.

One thing though... it would be A LOT better with people all in the same room instead of two seperate rooms (unless you are doing team games)

[fiji]

if you have 2 switches in both of the rooms and then one crossover cable to connect the switches

there will only be 100mbs bandwidth inbetween the rooms for everyone (this should be more than enough unless your doing tons of file sharing ;) )

but inside the rooms it will be however fast the NIC's to each computer are

[TalvaranRW]

First of all don't use a hub, bleh very slow. Also make sure you are in control of the router (if you use one) because last time the host kept cutting of the internet to people who bothered him at all. If it's a smaller party 2 rooms isn't that great, because i was at a 4 person party and we have 1 person who sucks at halo but kicks ass at CS and one person who ownz at halo and sucks at CS and they were on a team, and I was with this other guy who is decent but not excellent. But the teams were stacked the whole night and I will admit it totally sucked and we can't change the teams around because we are in different rooms so if you can put everyone in the same room it makes life so much easier because that way teams can be switched at any time

[Scratchy]

ok thanks very much , i have 1x 5 port switch on the way and an 8 port switch. I didnt mean hub when i said it before, just a typo. Thanks for your advice. The teams are sorted before hand and should be fine. As for linking the two switches, this needs to be a crossover cable? sorry just to confirm, any way it will work with a normal cable?

Thanks adam

[su root]

Here's a cut and paste from another project I'm working on:

There are generally 2 types of ports on your switch: Uplink ports, and Regular Ports.
* a Regular port is what will be the bulk of ports on the router. These ports are what your computers plug into. This is an MDI-II interface.
* an Uplink port is generally used for linking switches. It has an MDI-X interface.

In every ethernet link, there must be ONE cross in the network:

* A regular port is MDI-II, a "straight" (no-cross) interface.
* An uplink port is an MDI-X, a crossed interface
* Your network card is an MDI-X, crossed interface.
* A straight (aka patch) cable is a no-cross cable.
* A crossover cable is a crossed cable.

So, some valid combinations are:

* Regular Port - Straight Cable - Computer NIC (Normal connection, Cross is at the computer's NIC)
* Regular Port - Crossover Cable - Regular Port (Linking Switches, cross is in the cable)
* Uplink Port - Straight Cable - Regular Port (Linking Switches, cross is in the uplink port)
* etc.

Exception: Some routers have "auto-crossover" ports instead of uplink ports and regular ports. These auto-detect whether to be MDI-II or MDI-X. You can use any combination of cables and devices with these ports, and they will figure it out.


Also: from my lan-party-hosting experiences:
Is there enough power for everyone?
Air conditioners? (usually not an issue where I live)
Food and Drink? The ones I run is a "I buy the pop, everyone chips in $5 for pizza"
Networking - I run a DHCP server to hand out IP addresses to get everyone connected very easily.
Internet - people may need internet access to download game updates, etc.

[Scratchy]

hi there, thanks for the replys. Can you explain this DHCP thingy to me futher please, i like the sound of this easy to set up thing :D, im guessing this is some kind of dedicated server?

thanks

[fiji]

dynamic host configuration protocol ( i mightve gotten a word wrong in there lol)

anyway basically it just gives all the computers that hook up to the network , an ip address --- rather than having to configure a static ip for all the puters


most "broadband routers" and most cable modems do this

[su root]

Originally posted by Scratchy
hi there, thanks for the replys. Can you explain this DHCP thingy to me futher please, i like the sound of this easy to set up thing :D, im guessing this is some kind of dedicated server?

thanks
The easiest way to think about it is a computer that gives out IP addresses to everyone else on the network.

It doesn't have to be a dedicated server... if you run Internet Connection Sharing, or another type of proxy, this is done for you automatically. If you have a router, it runs DHCP to auto-configure everyone on the network to use it. The easiest way to run a DHCP server is to use internet proxy software of some kind, which would also allow other people to use your internet connection.

[bert202]

I always give people an ip when i have a lan so i know what their address is so i can ping them. Also if a computer can't see another computers shares i can search for an ip address instead of the computer name and don't have to look up ips. Its a matter of preference though, although DHCP is easier once you understand how to set it up i must agree.

I always do the $5 thing too, we always get a 42 inch pizza just big enough that you have to twist it to get it through the door. :D