what do i need for a 4 man lan party?

thats my wuestion just wanna make some fun wit friends but what do i need?

i have adsl

router, some network cables, 4 copys of the same game, crates of junk food, coke, and any other caffine product.

oh, and 4 guys

also get googling, some games dont like more than one person playing form the same public (ADSL/Cable) IP address. If you're just going to play locally with your own server then a switch rather than a router will also work

faster network equipment (gigabit) would be fun..

for local gaming..

A time, a date, a location, a list of games to be played (everone must have a copy... with some exceptions, like starcraft/broodwar, where spawns can be used for those without copies).

A router is a good idea (gives you DHCP addressing), one network card and cable per person. A chair and table for each person. An understanding of the electrical layout of the room(s), so you don't overload any circuits (with 4 boxes, you shouldn't have any problems). A/C to cool things down (lots of comptuers = very hot).

At ours, we charge $5 at the door for food (pizza), and the host scores the profit for providing free pop.

Unless you have real chunky adsl (~4mbit) or old games (halflife 1 era or older) I wouldn't try playing internet games with 4 people. I suppose if you have good upstream bandwidth you could always be the server tho.

Set the IP of one windows xp pc to 192.168.0.1 if you don't have a router, then it will act as a DHCP server

You will want games with bots/coop for a start

svencoop (with rcbot)
wolfenstein et (with bobot)
ut 2004
cs: source
battlefield 2 (with the bf2 coop 0.4 mod)
quake 3

I find that for small lans or home networks coop games often work best (at least for fps titles) because the same 3 way game of cs with you all kicking the bots asses gets a bit boring, whereas the sense of teamwork of me vs those evil ai opponents is more fun.

>HyperlogiK< said:

Unless you have real chunky adsl (~4mbit) or old games (halflife 1 era or older) I wouldn't try playing internet games with 4 people. I suppose if you have good upstream bandwidth you could always be the server tho.

Set the IP of one windows xp pc to 192.168.0.1 if you don't have a router, then it will act as a DHCP server

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Any decent broadband connection should be OK to play 4 simultaneous games online, unless you are on dialup or have a very restricted connection, like <256kbps. Games take very little bandwidth, but require low-latency connections.. with several people playing, your pings will be elevated, but should still be decent, and under 100ms.

Setting your IP to 192.168.0.1 will not make XP a DHCP server.. you will need to have a PC with 2 NICs, and enable ICS (which has a DHCP server) for this to work.

If you are looking for a few good co-op games, I highly recommend Serious Sam: The second encounter (the other sam games are fun, but this one is the best IMHO... I once played the entire game in co-op on Seriously Hard with a group of 2 friends in about 6 hours.. it's crazy.)

Another good one is UT2k4 Invasion .. works better when you have 10 or more people, otherwise fill it up with bots... the idea is to team up with friends and bots and try to stay alive against huge waves of enemies until you all die in a single wave, or you beat level 16. I think me & my friends have only ever made it to wave 11... but it's good fun.

Oroka Sempai said:

and 4 guys

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Just guys?!?!

There is no need to bother with a DHCP server or anything complicated like that, especially if internet access isn't needed. Windows will automatically assign each PC an IP address if it is unable to contact a DHCP server. It makes the temporary setup much easier than worrying about routers and subnetting, etc.

As su mentioned just manually giving a single PC a static IP address won't make it into a DHCP server. You could however just as easily assign each PC an address in the same subnet as we are only talking about four PCs.

Cjwinnit said:

Just guys?!?!

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Yeah, otherwise your run the chance of signal interferance with your players... (IE more flirting, less playing). That is what pron is for (jk, aslong is it is a cool girl, not your buddys ditzy gf he dragged along).


My idea of a LAN party is all your buddys, in a room, wired on caffine, at 3am, fed with only junk food, and a really hot room. Your are all proably dirty and sweaty too if you are doing the weekend thing.

Ohhh.... how i miss the good ol days My GF would kill me if I even suggested such a thing

so i need a router? will my own router work?
and whats a switch?

If you currently have a router, then that one will work fine. Make sure you have enough ports for the people... if it's you and 3 others, then make sure there's 3 empty ports right now.

Extremely simplified, a switch is "extra ports" for your router.

if your going to be buying new hardware a cheap 100mb hub would be suffice( a hub is a multiport repeater, very fast compared to a switch yet has significantly more collisions because of the one collision domain whereas each port on a switch is a collision domain, same goes for a router) and a switch is a network device that selects a path or circuit for sending a unit of data to its next destination, using MAC addresses(same with hubs i believe) where as a Router uses IP's. this is probably more than you need to know but if your router has adequate lan ports then you should be just fine. also make sure everyone has a "straight-through" cable

if your looking for a cheap way to set up a lan party then a hub would be the way to go and just use a class c network scheme such as this i would recomend for all 4 computers:

Computer 1; IP:192.168.0.10 Subnet:255.255.255.0
Computer 2; IP:192.168.0.11 Subnet:255.255.255.0
Computer 3; IP:192.168.0.12 Subnet:255.255.255.0
Computer 4; IP:192.168.0.13 Subnet:255.255.255.0
Computer 5; IP:192.168.0.14 Subnet:255.255.255.0

for the last octet you dont have to use those numbers but it makes it easy for you

And if all your friends have a "wired" broadband connection then they will have either a Cat5e or Cat6 cable which will be straighthrough. And seeing as yall probably have newer computers since your having a lanparty you probably dont need any network cards because practically all motherboards come with onboard ethernet port. But assuming they have internet connection at home this wont be a problem and you will just have to decide whether your router is suffice or if you want to get a switch or hub.

su root said:

Setting your IP to 192.168.0.1 will not make XP a DHCP server.. you will need to have a PC with 2 NICs, and enable ICS (which has a DHCP server) for this to work.

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I stand corrected. I shouldn't have said that, as I have never tested it myself, it was something I was told emphatically at the last LAN we organised.

On the multiple games sharing an internet connection I would say 2 things.

- IMHO online play with a ping over 30 sucks for modern games, that's what LANS are for lag free play with 0 ping. If you want an online game tell everybody to stay at home and play from there!

- I have found titles like BF2 to be unplayable for more than one person on 1MB and 2MB bb, I just can't take having to shoot in front of somebody to hit them.

Under 30ms? I don't know about you, but my default gateway is about 24ms away, if it leaves my ISP, then outside my ISP's network it jumps into the high 30s or low 40s or higher... the only way I would be able to play a game with under 30ms lag is local, or if my ISP hosted it.

I've built and hosted a 14-player CS server on my internet connection, with all pings under 100.. if 14 people can play fine coming into my network, where upload bandwidth is restricted, then I imagine atleast double that should be able to play from my network to a server on the Internet. Adding people will add traffic and slow response times, but you should be able to host a lan party fine with 4 people using internet servers.

I'd recommend running games locally though.. (otherwise, what's the point.. you could all connect to the same server from home..)

I only really play BF2 online atm and my ping in the server browser is usually about 35-45 and the ping in the game is usually shown as high twenties, sometimes low thirties. I've only been playing on two servers though, and they may well be on my ISP. I used to play CSS and other titles a lot, and found that tolerable with much higher pings, but then there are no aircraft to fly.

Set the IP of one windows xp pc to 192.168.0.1 if you don't have a router, then it will act as a DHCP server

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Wrong (as far as i know).... setting an IP to that does not automatically turn windows into a DHCP server......

>HyperlogiK< said:

I only really play BF2 online atm and my ping in the server browser is usually about 35-45 and the ping in the game is usually shown as high twenties, sometimes low thirties. I've only been playing on two servers though, and they may well be on my ISP. I used to play CSS and other titles a lot, and found that tolerable with much higher pings, but then there are no aircraft to fly.

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agreed