I’ve always wanted to participate in a real LAN party. Sure, I’ve done minor LANs with a few people, but never one of those crazy LANs with tons of different games going on at once. Well, finally after four years of pushing for a LAN party, the Academy of Information Technology is throwing one. The change in heart seemed to occur once the academy directors found out a rival school hosts several LANs each year.

Since I’m active member of the academy, I’ve been put in charge, along with a few other standout AOIT members, of planning the whole event. Well, at least the technical side. Other students have already picked the games and are handling marketing-related tasks. My group is just the one in charge of making sure everything will work.

This task doesn’t come easy, mainly due to the technical constraints of my school. For example, we only have so many outlets, so we really have to plan out our power usage. On the networking side of things, we only have so much equipment to use to hook up the network. I’m sure other LANs run into similar issues, it’s just we have a smaller timeframe to work with, so we need to plan quickly.

I’m kind of looking for some guidance. Since this will be the first LAN I’ve managed, I want to make sure everything will work as expected. To insure this, I thought I’d run my current plans through you guys, to make sure I didn’t overlook something.

For our LAN, we’ll have a Linksys router serving out IP addresses. Each of the four ports will run to four different sixteen port switches. We’ll have one game server (just a standard computer running the game’s dedicated server application) hooked up to one of the switches. From there, computers will be plugged into the switches. That configuration is similar to AOIT’s current lab network, so I’m fairly certain it will work. I’m just wonder if that’s the best way to go about it.

For the attendees, my group is currently making up a setup sheet. That sheet will explain how to configure a computer for DHCP, if it isn’t already. We’ll also have a list of the games’ minimum specs, as well as any additional hardware required. We’re hoping that this will make configuration easier on our participants, since the majority of them have limited technical knowledge. If you think of something that I missed, let me know.

Well, that pretty much covers it. While things are slowly coming together, there is still much to do. I’m really aiming to make things go a smooth as possible, since it’s a miracle my school is even allowing AOIT to have this. So, once again, if you have any suggestions from past LANs you’ve attended/managed, let me know. I’m a newbie when it comes to LANs, so I could use all the help I can get.