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LAN Party setup (~40 PC's)

M

mattm

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2006
Messages
173
Looking for recommendations on setting up to a 40 PC LAN party. I'm planning on setting up a LAN party to raise money for a local college group and was wondering if anyone had a switch(es) and cabling that they recommended.

Typical games like CS and BF will be the main games being played. Thanks in advance.
 
Just be sure to get a managed switch so you can set the people you don't like to half duplex :p
 
40x PCs..not much to worry about. Try to uplink several smaller switches to one central switch that your server(s) are plugged into. Fiber and the typical nominations for Cisco Catalysts..pure overkill...all for show.
 
Run out to bestbuy or just go with newegg and pickup two 24 port switches with gig uplinks... use the upling or gig ports to join the two switches. That should be more than sufficient.
 
Awesome, thanks for the input. Should the servers run entirely off it's own gige switch with the PC switches uplinked via gige?
 
mattm said:
Awesome, thanks for the input. Should the servers run entirely off it's own gige switch with the PC switches uplinked via gige?
Click to expand...

For organizations sake, I would do it that way. Have one main core switch. And only connect switch to switch. Not switch to switch to switch, etc.

I think Bestbuy still has 5 port D-Link Gige for something like $25 if you need some smaller ones.
 
If you have enough gigE ports on your client switches for the servers, then just run the servers on them. If not, then get a 5 or 8 port gigE switch.

Also, I'd consider setting the client ports to 10Mbps just to make sure people aren't using your bandwidth by screwing around, sharing pirated games, etc. Games don't need that much bandwidth to play.
 
dandragonrage said:
If you have enough gigE ports on your client switches for the servers, then just run the servers on them. If not, then get a 5 or 8 port gigE switch.

Also, I'd consider setting the client ports to 10Mbps just to make sure people aren't using your bandwidth by screwing around, sharing pirated games, etc. Games don't need that much bandwidth to play.
Click to expand...

Yea, I didn't think they would require much bandwidth. Matter of fact I wasn't sure if I was going to open the LAN up to the internet. Partly because I'm guessing i would need a more expensive managed switch to make vlan's etc and we're trying to raise money, not spend ;)
 
Managed 10/100 switches with gigabit uplink ports are super cheap now. Get the one I linked to on Ebay.
 
Ah - didn't notice that was managed. Any experience with these, good UI or hard to learn?
 
mattm said:
Awesome, thanks for the input. Should the servers run entirely off it's own gige switch with the PC switches uplinked via gige?
Click to expand...

Ideally...yeah...as most servers (and even desktops now) come with gigabit NICs...you can get a less expensive switch with a gigabit port or two....uplink the server to that..perhaps another switch to the 2nd one...and uplink the other switches you have to the regular 10/100 ports. It's nice to go all gigabit..sure..but honestly..for a LAN party of that small size...going nuts and trying to budget all gigabit gear is..well..a bit overkill IMO.

Ideally it's nice to have just one big 48 port switch..or a pair of 24 port switches. But I think you'll find, for a LAN party, after everyones setup...you'll have a need for several smaller switches going around to corners of the room...people uplinking to those using shorter patch cables. If you can get the budget for it..sure...but since you said "fund raising"....you want to keep expenses low...and produce a high kitty fund to donate.

Also...some other tips from having setup and run many LAN parties in the past..including some decent sizes ones over a hundred peeps..

*APC battery backup unit to run the server on...depending on where you LAN party is..sometimes a lotta peeps will crash the circuit breakers. Having a running game server power off suddenly..you don't want to see that lovely blue screen upon trying to boot it up again.

*Run DHCP from something...like a router. Makes easy for everyone to come to the party with TCP set to obtain auto...and get gaming.

*Prepare a list for all LAN party guests ahead of time. The goal for YOU...as well as for your guests...is to have everyone up and gaming with very little time wasted. What I've done...
***Have computers fully functional, TCP set to obtain auto
***A list of games to be run at the LAN...versions...and add-on/map packs...so everyone has all of these ahead of time on their computer. You don't want people spending tons of time installing games, asking around for map packs, etc.
***Declare P2P/torrent programs to never be run at the LAN, you don't need a few users running that stuff killing your internet connection, router, and switches. The LAN is for gaming!
***Discourage people to bring huge speakers and subwoofer sets..you don't need a loud battle of the bands. Small desktop speakers..or better yet..headphones.
***Have people bring their own surge protectors...the frequent LANrs will anyways..and the smarter ones will even bring smaller UPS units cuz they don't like having power trips and crashed PCs

Some notes for yourself....the server...for a LAN part...a server grade NIC will perform better for many concurrent clients over cheaper desktop NICs.
I'm a fan of SCSI hard drives for servers...handles the heavier loads better. But for a 40x LAN...a nice 7,200 or higher...8 meg cache or higher..SATA drive will suffice.
Lock down your server!!!! Many idiots will try to break into your server. Don't share the drives...if you have to share a folder for people to download map packs 'n patches...make it "read only" share. Make sure you don't have a blank Administrator password. Shut off unneeded services from your server..like IIS, workstation and server service, remote registry, etc. Lock it down...make it lean and mean. And a low impact antivirus on it.
 
Good advice there. Good point with the short cables problem; you may need to do what he suggested unless you also provide the cable. 250-500' of CAT-5 is super cheap online. Even 500' of CAT-6 can be had for under $100 shipped online, and 5 is even cheaper. (5e is, of course, in the middle)
 
Wow - great feedback, thanks!

All very good points for pre LAN party planning. We still have another month or so to plan everything and get everyone in order.

I was actually going to run the game servers on liunx. I'm not a hardcore gamer, which is why i'm simply the host and "event planner" - however i'm advanced in linux and server setup etc. I hope the major games aren't Win2k3 specific. I was going to run games on a dual xeon quad core setup with 15k serial scsi drives. I was also planning on running each game server independently in it's own vmware server on the physical server.
 
Im in a similar situation as you, my mate will be setting up a lan party (much much larger) here in Wales. I however, does not play games, does not even know why lan parties are so popular, so you can tell that im pretty new to the gaming scene!

I know evrything about the networking, already set up the router with captive portal for certain people to use internet (we only have small pipe). Set up DHCP and DNS on a separate server, and have got a file server running windows 2003 for some shared files. I have put in 4 48 port 10/100 switches with fiber uplink and a 24 port gigabit with 8 fiber uplinks. Networks all working, but i dont know anything about game servers! I have got 3 servers with a pair of dual core xeons and 16 gig of ram (they are being lent from the organisers).

Can someone link me to a guide on what i need ?
 
mattm said:
I was actually going to run the game servers on liunx. I'm not a hardcore gamer, which is why i'm simply the host and "event planner" - however i'm advanced in linux and server setup etc. I hope the major games aren't Win2k3 specific. I was going to run games on a dual xeon quad core setup with 15k serial scsi drives. I was also planning on running each game server independently in it's own vmware server on the physical server.
Click to expand...

Sounds fine horsepower wise...15k SAS...nice....she'll do well.

As for *nix..just check out your games ahead of time...many have dedicated server components for either OS...so come up with the list of the games you wish to do at the LAN...find out ahead of time if they have dedicated server downloads for *nix...and..if the list completes...you're good to go. You can "admin" them all with a laptop...using remote admin tools specific to each game.

I've only built Windows gaming servers.....and you can pack a lot of games onto the same server (even a several of the same game..just different ports for each game instance)...so dunno if going VMWare is necessary.

Internet access...if yes can run the DHCP from the router...if no can just run DHCP from your *nix server.
 
PFsense on 1 gig of ram and a pentium4 because of the captive portal feature which i have only ever come accross on proper wireless access points annd a few firewalls that cost a a BOMB, and are not needed in this configuration. I also have a ASA firewall we could have used but i chose pfsense as the ASA has a few problems that i cant be asked fixing!
 
priteshvarsani said:
PFsense on 1 gig of ram and a pentium4 because of the captive portal feature which i have only ever come accross on proper wireless access points annd a few firewalls that cost a a BOMB, and are not needed in this configuration. I also have a ASA firewall we could have used but i chose pfsense as the ASA has a few problems that i cant be asked fixing!
Click to expand...

I was going to go with either smoothwall or m0n0wall. Possibly try out the vyatta open source router if I have time to set it up.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Sounds fine horsepower wise...15k SAS...nice....she'll do well.

As for *nix..just check out your games ahead of time...many have dedicated server components for either OS...so come up with the list of the games you wish to do at the LAN...find out ahead of time if they have dedicated server downloads for *nix...and..if the list completes...you're good to go. You can "admin" them all with a laptop...using remote admin tools specific to each game.

I've only built Windows gaming servers.....and you can pack a lot of games onto the same server (even a several of the same game..just different ports for each game instance)...so dunno if going VMWare is necessary.

Internet access...if yes can run the DHCP from the router...if no can just run DHCP from your *nix server.
Click to expand...

What kind of horsepower should I expect these games to consume? The server I was going to borrow from another department is a new Dell they haven't provisioned. The specs are

dual quad core xeon 1.8's
4gb ram
Raid 1 73gb SAS drives

We have a couple older dual core xeons with regular SATA drives in our lab - if I don't have to borrow (burn a favor) I don't want to. It's dual, dual core xeon 2.0ghz with 4GB ram but 160GB sata drives.

Any thoughts?
 
games like CS:S can consume a good GB ram per instance... depending on how people you're expecting of course....


but dual quad core is plenty to take care of the processing (i'd def give each instance it's own core)... and the scsi drives are fine for map loading and etc....

mem seems like the limiting factor, if there is any limiting factors at all
 
I guess i would look for the highest peak performance consumer. Worse case scenario situations like, all 40 PC's playing CS:Source at once.
 
mattm said:
What kind of horsepower should I expect these games to consume? The server I was going to borrow from another department is a new Dell they haven't provisioned. The specs are

dual quad core xeon 1.8's
4gb ram
Raid 1 73gb SAS drives

We have a couple older dual core xeons with regular SATA drives in our lab - if I don't have to borrow (burn a favor) I don't want to. It's dual, dual core xeon 2.0ghz with 4GB ram but 160GB sata drives.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

The last public gaming server I had running online.....
Dual 1.0 P3, pair of Seagate Cheetah SCSI
1 gig of RAM
Ran BF'42 vanilla
2x instances of BF'42 DC
BF'42 Vietnam
All 42 and 64 player servers.

We'd fill it up fairly full..she was a public gaming server on a 20 meg slice of OC-3...and at peak load took a solid 11 megs of upload.

I don't recall ever seeing the CPU load average up above 60-70%. So running a few games for a 40x person LAN...peh....even that old rig wouldn't break a sweat. So surely your duallie 1.8 Xeon might..might..nudge 10% utilization.
 
Before spending much time and resources on the "router choice"...
*Do you plan on offering internet access?
*If so...how big is the pipe?
*If pipe is big enough upload...to you intend to allow players from the public to log into the LAN game server?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Before spending much time and resources on the "router choice"...
*Do you plan on offering internet access?
*If so...how big is the pipe?
*If pipe is big enough upload...to you intend to allow players from the public to log into the LAN game server?
Click to expand...

These are good questions and thanks for your input above - good to know I may not need to borrow that server.

Internet access is still up in the air. We are on the universities LAN so bandwidth isn't really an issue (last I knew our satellite campus location had 30mbs up/down) We are going to do a short presentation (for the cause) that may or may not require internet access.

Also, I think the group is split 50/50 on letting internet players join. We want the people to pay to play with one another - but the vote could go to allow internet access. I'm just trying to prep for worse case scenario.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The last public gaming server I had running online.....
Dual 1.0 P3, pair of Seagate Cheetah SCSI
1 gig of RAM
Ran BF'42 vanilla
2x instances of BF'42 DC
BF'42 Vietnam
All 42 and 64 player servers.

We'd fill it up fairly full..she was a public gaming server on a 20 meg slice of OC-3...and at peak load took a solid 11 megs of upload.

I don't recall ever seeing the CPU load average up above 60-70%. So running a few games for a 40x person LAN...peh....even that old rig wouldn't break a sweat. So surely your duallie 1.8 Xeon might..might..nudge 10% utilization.
Click to expand...

Just so I understand these metrics - this one box and roughly 11Mbps of BW handled almost 200+ players simultaneous? It does sound like the new shiny Dell may be overkill!
 
mattm said:
Just so I understand these metrics - this one box and roughly 11Mbps of BW handled almost 200+ players simultaneous? It does sound like the new shiny Dell may be overkill!
Click to expand...

cs:s is going to take a bit more cpu i think... my last public server i had running an 18player 100tic public and a 11 player 100 tic private on a 2.8ghz northwood 533 p4... when both servers were near max, cpu utilization was topping out... iirc i ended up having to nudge the pub down to 66tic.... disk drive was a 80 gig ide wd or something... and i could tell the difference in map changes between it and a pro server... so having sas drives will be nice....

i'd say just having 40 players in CS:S max, you're fine no matter how you slice it... even comparing an old netburst 2.8ghz northy to a new quad xeon is laughable

i personally prefer smaller servers, but you could conceivably put all 40 in a single server no problem... and with 4 gigs of ram and your CPUs, you could run 2 20s or 4 match servers easily...

rest assured... having beefy enough server hardware is the least of your issues
 
You can limit the speed of the internet with any decent router if bandwidth is an issue. I'd think that the bigger issue would be people going on sites they shouldn't.
 
goodcooper said:
cs:s is going to take a bit more cpu i think... my last public server i had running an 18player 100tic public and a 11 player 100 tic private on a 2.8ghz northwood 533 p4... when both servers were near max, cpu utilization was topping out... iirc i ended up having to nudge the pub down to 66tic.... disk drive was a 80 gig ide wd or something... and i could tell the difference in map changes between it and a pro server... so having sas drives will be nice....

i'd say just having 40 players in CS:S max, you're fine no matter how you slice it... even comparing an old netburst 2.8ghz northy to a new quad xeon is laughable

i personally prefer smaller servers, but you could conceivably put all 40 in a single server no problem... and with 4 gigs of ram and your CPUs, you could run 2 20s or 4 match servers easily...

rest assured... having beefy enough server hardware is the least of your issues
Click to expand...

I meant to ask, what kind of storage volume should I expect will 73GB drives suffice or will I need more?
 
mattm said:
Internet access is still up in the air. We are on the universities LAN so bandwidth isn't really an issue (last I knew our satellite campus location had 30mbs up/down) We are going to do a short presentation (for the cause) that may or may not require internet access.

Also, I think the group is split 50/50 on letting internet players join. We want the people to pay to play with one another - but the vote could go to allow internet access. I'm just trying to prep for worse case scenario.
Click to expand...


School LAN...hosting an online game might not even be an option...ports blocked..cannot get a public IP address on the WAN interface of the rotuer...and/or packet shaping.
 
mattm said:
I meant to ask, what kind of storage volume should I expect will 73GB drives suffice or will I need more?
Click to expand...

should be fine... iirc, an instance of CS:S (srcds) for example takes up like 700-800MB (might be more nowadays)

kind of all depends on if you want to provide patches and disk images for the games and things... but even then, a 73GB should be fine...
 
Just thinking out loud now...

Anyone experiment with NIC bonding on Linux to help with throughput to the game servers? Just wondering if you've seen performance advantages.
 
mattm said:
Just thinking out loud now...

Anyone experiment with NIC bonding on Linux to help with throughput to the game servers? Just wondering if you've seen performance advantages.
Click to expand...

It won't be necessary for 40 people.

If you're worried about it, the easier thing to do is to get 2 switches and 2 NICs in the server and hook half the people to one switch and one NIC and the other half to the other switch/NIC.
 
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