What is needed for a LAN

[TheModDoctor]

Hi. My school is 80 years old this year, and coming middle-late August we are going to have a huge fest. Now our IT teacher thought about having a LAN here over that weekend, but so far he hasn't had the time to look into it further (or ask the headmaster).
Now I thought maybe I can ask the headmaster, but before I want to do that, I want to have done my homework. I don't really expect lots of kids to turn up, because Brits is a boere town and not heavily into technology. But there might be some at least. What is generally needed for a LAN? Yeah, you guessed it, I've never been to a real LAN like rAge and Mayhem before..

1) Are there any major costs involed?
2) What hardware is needed?
3) How much cable?
4) Is an exhibition necessary? (for a small LAN)
5) What is fair or recommended fees to attend a LAN?
6) How exactly does the setup work? Who brings what and when?
7) There will be a tuck shop, but not till midnight... Snacks important?
8 ) Anti-virus your own responsibility?
9) Other network security?
10) Who supplies the games?
11) And a very important question, what can possibly go wrong?
12) Anything I missed?

I'm also not really a network expert, and IMHO, the schools network guys are a bit useless. Can anyone share some light, if it would be a good idea or a total bust.

[Nuke]

How many people do you expect? I'm not really into lanning, but I can help with the network part. You can make do with a 100mb unmanaged switch for a small lan. Though a managed switch would be better(a 3550 would be awesome jk).

What network equipment do you already have?

[TheModDoctor]

Well, my friend have a 20 port switch, and maybe we could "borrow" the IT class switches as well. Both also 20port I think.
To tell you the truth, I really don't have any idea of how many to expect... Like I said, these boere here is more into braai, rugby and quad bikes than PC's. If I quickly think of ppl who might come, it'll be me, and maybe 8 other people.

[Prime]

never attended a big lan, but at most small lans, you supply your own cable. i don't think this would not be practical at a big lan. see if you can rent cables and equipement. i think 3 metre cables made up by most computer suppliers are 15 bucks.

As for Games, maybe look at free MP games like fear combat. Set up a central PC to host the games and to install the file from.

Security, i would think is each individuals own responsibility.

Snacks are very important.

[Charger14]

1) If you need to pay for facilities then yes otherwise no

2) Your pcs, switch (regular off the shelf 100meg switch is fine,size depends on how many people are going) We had a small 16 man LAN with a rubbish little switch and it was fine, you feel it when leeching but keep gaming so there's no time for that network cable and power only other thing really.

3) Enough for each machine to reach the switch

4) No. Unless you want to be fancy

5) See what your costs are then price it so you can cover them/make a profit if you want to

6) Organise that between a few guys, everyone brings their own PC, usually someone will provide the switch and/or cabling

7) Snacks are of vital importance. Without them a LAN cannot happen.

8 ) Yup, if you want to leech someones virused horse prons and you got no AV its your problem

9) Uhm, not really hey.

10) If you got something free to use then just set up a share for everyone to get it from, otherwise you choose what games you going to play and everyone brings their respective copies(ideally)

11) Alot actually, switch might fry, power cut, guys might flop and not pitch (which is what usually happens) or your cabling might not work.

12) Try and stay off the school network, just in case something goes south or someone has a virus that goes wild, just so you can cover yourselves and you dont get blamed stopping future lans

On a side note, shame man I feel for you, I used to live in Harties, ooh fun when they kill algae on the dam. What school you go to?

[g33k]

d00d, it's easy:

1) Petrol to get there
2) Computers, Network cards, Network cables, Hub(pref a switch), Monitors, Chairs, Tables, Beanbags, Headphones, extensions, adapters, UPS, kb, mice, Score board,
3) That depends man on how many players? 1 fly lead per person, one for the server(if any) and one for the router(if any)
4) How many people do you want to invite?
5) If everyone brings their own drinks and snacks, 10 bucks each should cover the electricity and toilet flush rates.
6) Everyone HAS to bring their OWN power adapter, pc, monitor, kb, mouse, headphones, extension and pref UPS. I would suggest you have 2 or 3 external hdds with the games on them along with a "server". Server being a normal desktop that will host the games if need be. Agree before the time what games will be played when, otherwise it will cause chaos. Make sure you have the rel'vant patches and mods avail'ble for everyone. Decide before the time when it will start and when it will end. Stick to those times.
7) Snacks are more important than your computer. End. Of. Story.
I would suggest Anti-Virus be a MUST. If the person does not have anti-virus, I suggest AVG-FREE or one of the other free flavours be freely avail'ble. Everyone thinks they aren't infected. That's why most are. Thinking doesn't work, being sure does.
9) Providing everyone has their firewalls up and don't have anything they don't want seen, shared, you should be fine. If you are still worried open WINDOWS EXPLORER, click on TOOLS | FOLDER OPTIONS | VIEW | scroll to the bottom and disable SIMPLE FILE AND FOLDER SHARING. Then go to your CONTROL PANEL | USER ACCOUNTS and DISABLE the GUEST ACCOUNT. Now a person would need to "log on" to your computer before they could see what was shared. Check your firewall, that which you don't need at the LAN, disable.
10) Those who decide on what to play must supply the games. Pref the free ones as patching and cracking is not an option at a LAN. Only retards play pirated games. If you have an original game and another guy also has an original, then you guys can play together, otherwise stick to the counter-strikes etc
11) Anything? Everything? Break a finger? Guy gets punched for fragging? Colddrink gets spilled on keyboard? Seriously? Just check, check and double check everything and you guys should be fine.
12) What about mid frag entertainment? Remember to record your demos as you can play them out at the next LAN or keep them for like, er, whatever man.

Stay off the school network. Bad idea. Really bad idea. I can't say how bad of an idea it really is. No. There should be no physical link between your LAN and the school network.

To be safe run on a silly local range like 10.0.0.X.

Hope this helps?

[Pieterpan]

d00d, it's easy:

1) Petrol to get there
2) Computers, Network cards, Network cables, Hub(pref a switch), Monitors, Chairs, Tables, Beanbags, Headphones, extensions, adapters, UPS, kb, mice, Score board,
3) That depends man on how many players? 1 fly lead per person, one for the server(if any) and one for the router(if any)
4) How many people do you want to invite?
5) If everyone brings their own drinks and snacks, 10 bucks each should cover the electricity and toilet flush rates.
6) Everyone HAS to bring their OWN power adapter, pc, monitor, kb, mouse, headphones, extension and pref UPS. I would suggest you have 2 or 3 external hdds with the games on them along with a "server". Server being a normal desktop that will host the games if need be. Agree before the time what games will be played when, otherwise it will cause chaos. Make sure you have the rel'vant patches and mods avail'ble for everyone. Decide before the time when it will start and when it will end. Stick to those times.
7) Snacks are more important than your computer. End. Of. Story.
I would suggest Anti-Virus be a MUST. If the person does not have anti-virus, I suggest AVG-FREE or one of the other free flavours be freely avail'ble. Everyone thinks they aren't infected. That's why most are. Thinking doesn't work, being sure does.
9) Providing everyone has their firewalls up and don't have anything they don't want seen, shared, you should be fine. If you are still worried open WINDOWS EXPLORER, click on TOOLS | FOLDER OPTIONS | VIEW | scroll to the bottom and disable SIMPLE FILE AND FOLDER SHARING. Then go to your CONTROL PANEL | USER ACCOUNTS and DISABLE the GUEST ACCOUNT. Now a person would need to "log on" to your computer before they could see what was shared. Check your firewall, that which you don't need at the LAN, disable.
10) Those who decide on what to play must supply the games. Pref the free ones as patching and cracking is not an option at a LAN. Only retards play pirated games. If you have an original game and another guy also has an original, then you guys can play together, otherwise stick to the counter-strikes etc
11) Anything? Everything? Break a finger? Guy gets punched for fragging? Colddrink gets spilled on keyboard? Seriously? Just check, check and double check everything and you guys should be fine.
12) What about mid frag entertainment? Remember to record your demos as you can play them out at the next LAN or keep them for like, er, whatever man.

Stay off the school network. Bad idea. Really bad idea. I can't say how bad of an idea it really is. No. There should be no physical link between your LAN and the school network.

To be safe run on a silly local range like 10.0.0.X.

Hope this helps?

That would cover it as he said. lol . Know what you mean with "em boers " lol am from brits so yeah ... goodluck tought

[douglash]

@ ModD

2 main things you need to run a LAN, Power and Network.

Power - Decide how many people you are going to have and then you can figure out how much power you will need and also how much is availalbe for you to use.

Network - once again, depends on the amount of people. You should get 1 core switch ( a good one ) and the rest can connect to that.

Once you have those 2 basics covered, the rest is a walk-thru...

if you need more help on this, mail me (douglash (at) frag.co.za) or even check out our site - www.frag.co.za (we do LAN's in Durban and would be more than willing to help you out...

[TheModDoctor]

Thanks guys.

I thought that maybe we could use the IT class room because the switches and cables are already set up. As you said, I agree to stay very very very very far away from the school network. We could just for that weekend remove the school pc's (useless anyway) and have the cables, switches and power plugs ready. The class room have about 20 pc's, and space for a bit more. 20 people might be what I can expect, because I talked to some of my friends today and most of them said they'll go for sure.

@Charger, I go to Hoërskool Wagpos
@Pieterpan, yeah I don't mean anything bad, but the boere community here just have different interests
@douglash, thanks. Your site have some useful information.

[TheModDoctor]

Usually, where do you sleep if it is an overnight LAN?

[UrBaN]

On the floor, under your chair, with your mouse in your socks (dae) whilst clutching your keyboard and snarling....at least that's what I've heard.

[TheModDoctor]

[Prime]

oh, oh , oh, an amazing amount of patience and tolerance for people who are full of horse dung

[g33k]

Sleep at a LAN ? 8O

[GreyWolf]

also, someone who knows how to set up networks. been to a few lans, and even at a simple 4 man get-together, you will find that one PC is not recognized on the network for some stupid reason.

[AcidT]

For you network setup ideas see this site

http://www.homenetworkhelp.info/index.p ... aming&mn=a there is a few tips there for you to look at.

Basically covered up top as well...

[AcidT]

The key thing to remember is

Enough POWER connections, extension leads, network switch/es and long enough ETHERNET cables...

[AcidT]

Oh and something else...

The games being played...if a shooter is played the maps used must cater for the amount of players at the LAN or at least the amount of players you would like to play against. I know most Multiplayer maps allows for more than 8 players at a time but you should double check it anyway.

Racing games is the same sort of depending on the game itself...if I can remember correctly the NFS series for example only allows 8 players on one track at a time...

[TheModDoctor]

The Headmaster approved the LAN, so this weekend is gonna be awesome!!! Unfortunately, our IT sentrum uses these stupid emergency power plugs (those with the half cylinder earths) and we only have enough power cables for 18 pc's. But I don't think it's going to be a big problem, as thus far only 13 people booked space.
Can't wait

[TheModDoctor]

The LAN was awesome! Not as many people came as expected, but enough for call of duty 4 awesomeness! We all restarted at level 1, and right now I am level 32
There was some disappointment, about half left on Saturday morning, and the rest of us was gone Saturday evening. But furthermore everything went smoothly.
+ I owned everyone