LAN parties

Sawell

Sawell

Sawell

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Southampton
Sup homeslices, so I was planning on hosting my own little party locally with around 50-60 people and was struck by a couple of questions.

I've got all my switches and networking ready to go (cables tbc), but am thinking that the venue is going to be the biggest problem.

Over a weekend what kind of power output do you think 60 machines would create?

Generally will the venue want back the bill for electricity consumption because of the type of event it is?

Do you think they will just generally be pretty adverse to a bunch of geeks sweating in a room with their pcs?

If there is internet connectivity what do you think the minimum speed requirement would be to be able to split it effectively between 60 nodes? (I realise monitoring would be required)


I just want to know this kind of stuff before I start calling around, if anyone's got any experience that'd be great.
 
That's a very big LAN party.

Wouldn't you be better hosting a smaller one to iron out issues and guage cost first?
 
Gilly said:
That's a very big LAN party.

Wouldn't you be better hosting a smaller one to iron out issues and guage cost first?
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Nope

edit: I run my own online community, similar to this but with a different topic of discussion. That's where the interest is from, and there's a lot of it.
 
I thought that at a LAN party you play against eachother, so do you really need internet connectivity?
 
My word that's a huge LAN party! I know it's over priced for what it is , but thought about going to the Multiplay i-Series LAN's instead? :)

The internet connection for 60 users would have to be fairly decent I would have thought.

I think Gilly is right, perhaps take a 1/10 or 1/5 of the size for the first one, work it all out, iron out the issues and then expand?
 
Sawell said:
Nope
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Er, OK.

In that case I have another question. How much cash do you have available to you? How much knowledge do you have on the setup and maintenance of the required interconnectivity? What kind of high capacity venue do you think you'll be able to hire that has a good enough connection for 60 geeks? How much gaming do you personally (unless you have someone available to you to sort out people that are having trouble getting started) expect to be able to do?
 
Well you wont need a fast internet connection, anything is a bonus, you just need a network as its a "LAN" so you will be playing against each other.
 
Knubje said:
My word that's a huge LAN party! I know it's over priced for what it is , but thought about going to the Multiplay i-Series LAN's instead? :)

The internet connection for 60 users would have to be fairly decent I would have thought.

I think Gilly is right, perhaps take a 1/10 or 1/5 of the size for the first one, work it all out, iron out the issues and then expand?
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I help run a 10-20 man party in my city but we get the hall free of charge (this is where i'm getting my equipment from). I have experience in running them just not on this scale, and not having to find a bigger hall :|
 
Sawell said:
I help run a 10-20 man party in my city but we get the hall free of charge (this is where i'm getting my equipment from). I have experience in running them just not on this scale, and not having to find a bigger hall :|
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If you have experience with 10-20 man I can't see any issues arrising you probably haven't already come across; except the obvious lack of space and bandwidth. Regarding the power output I'd roughly work your own PC's useage for 3 days and then multiply by 60 :) Add on the peripheral devices too (switches, etc) but they won't be much in comparison!
 
Gilly said:
Er, OK.

In that case I have another question. How much cash do you have available to you? How much knowledge do you have on the setup and maintenance of the required interconnectivity? What kind of high capacity venue do you think you'll be able to hire that has a good enough connection for 60 geeks? How much gaming do you personally (unless you have someone available to you to sort out people that are having trouble getting started) expect to be able to do?
Click to expand...

I have plenty of cash.

I've got pretty sound knowledge on networking 1-100 pcs on managed/unmanaged switches.

A venue next to the exchange? :P

Myself and 2 others will spend most of our time helping out others, no doubt. It's what happens in the current parties I do. We probably get about 10 hours in a 30 hour stretch to actually play, the rest of the time is sorting out the network, sorting out people's connections, installing drivers for people, doing food runs and general tom-foolery.
 
Sawell said:
Over a weekend what kind of power output do you think 60 machines would create?
Click to expand...

You should be able to do the maths roughly - say 350W per machine, (pc + monitor) then multiply by the number of hours, and players. Add 10-20% for good measure.

Generally will the venue want back the bill for electricity consumption because of the type of event it is?
Click to expand...
They probably havent thought of the above, so probably wont ask - but to be on the safe side, work out your usage roughly, multiply by 12p per KW/h and then be prepared to pay. If the venue is a charity place, or if you want to get in their good books - offer up the sum, you should get plenty kudos for doing so.

Do you think they will just generally be pretty adverse to a bunch of geeks sweating in a room with their pcs?
Click to expand...
Cant be worse than what other things big meeting halls get used for?

Hope that helps - I've had some experience of large(ish) scale (30-60 player) LAN events at FragSOC - York Uni Frag society

www.fragsoc.co.uk

^^ Might give you some ideas
 
I'd make sure you have a central server within the network with patches & other various things on. So there would be no need for a huge connection to the internet.

No idea on the rest of it though.
 
matt_fsr said:
You should be able to do the maths roughly - say 350W per machine, (pc + monitor) then multiply by the number of hours, and players. Add 10-20% for good measure.

They probably havent thought of the above, so probably wont ask - but to be on the safe side, work out your usage roughly, multiply by 12p per KW/h and then be prepared to pay. If the venue is a charity place, or if you want to get in their good books - offer up the sum, you should get plenty kudos for doing so.

Cant be worse than what other things big meeting halls get used for?

Hope that helps - I've had some experience of large(ish) scale (30-60 player) LAN events at FragSOC - York Uni Frag society

www.fragsoc.co.uk

^^ Might give you some ideas
Click to expand...

Mattey1 said:
I'd make sure you have a central server within the network with patches & other various things on. So there would be no need for a huge connection to the internet.

No idea on the rest of it though.
Click to expand...


Both very helpful, thanks.
 
Also - Definately worth having at least 1 dedicated machine, or a NAS - with all the game ISO images, software packages and game patches that you'll need on - as it'll end up getting hammered, so it wants to be a machine not in use.

If this is a regular thing, check out DC++ hashing - if everyone hashes up their game files etc with it prior to an event, it works in P2P fashion - so there isnt 1 person/PC who's NIC is getting saturated 100% of the time, and it allows you to share files around the LAN people much quicker while still playing games.

Most of all - Have fun! :D
 
I've had experience hosting a few Lan events on the same scale you're talking about.

Your main concern when it comes to venue will be power - you need to make sure the venue has enough juice to power 50 pcs, monitors, the servers and network equipment with room to spare.

I remember at one event I plugged a 3KW kettle in, and half the PC's in the room went down :/
 
there wil be a lot more to it than u think i would imagine. I suggest just all going to a larger LAN party and sitting together, e.g. an i-event in newbury if they still go on..
 
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