Advice on how to organize a LAN.

[gordanfreeman50]

For fundraising we want to LAN COD 4 at our school.
What I want to know are there any specific rules or laws, or can people just arrive pay R50 and hook up there pc's and jam?
Is it legal to LAN and charge money?

[Toxxyc]

Yes, I don't see it as "illegal". Anyhow, tips:

1. Don't lock it to CoD4. You're severely limiting your playing group.
2. Before letting someone play, please (if you have a decent school) ensure everyone has a legal copy of the game?
3. Ensure the venue can handle the current draw from all the PC's.
4. Be strict and safe. Get a security company to sit a guard at the event for the evening. Someone makes trouble (drinking, smoking when/where they shouldn't, any illegal or forbidden stuff) get them kicked out. It's better to lose one or two guys than to have the school refuse you to re-use their facilities due to lack of discipline.
5. Let people know that there will be no internet access, and have them set their Steam accounts to "Offline" before packing up at home.

I'll try and post more later, gotta go eat! :D

[Zoop]

Try and get slow switches (I think Rage only uses 10mb/s switches). It would deter leeching, as doing so will bring the entire network down.

[gordanfreeman50]

Interesting, nice advice!
I was wondering, can you connect two routers with 4 ports with a LAN cable and thus have 6 ports?

[Zoop]

I've never tried it with routers, but it works with switches. Can't see why it wouldn't work with routers.

[Toxxyc]

Router = network switch + ADSL access capability. It works perfectly, I do it quite often at LAN's.

[Incognito]

Few more tips:

-When you host the lan make sure you have enough tables and chairs for people, if it's those steel fold up tables then two people per table. And ALWAYS have working LAN cables. Nobody loves coming to a lan just to plug everything in and find out their cable is faulty, it's a headache to deal with so check the cables before the LAN and bring some extra cables. Something almost always breaks at a LAN.

-Have some form of sticker or bracelet that can't be copied to give to the people that are attending the LAN. One thing I learned from Liberty LAN is that you get some serious chancers out there that like to pay for one guy and bring extra people with them.

-Location and power is everything. If the location you are hosting at doesn't have sufficient power to power 100 pc's, you're going to have blackouts and lose potential customers. Riot LAN played smart when they used one of the vacant floors in the offices from Horizon View Shopping Centre because the power grid there can probably support over 500 pc's

-Have a car guard that you can trust or hire one from a security agency like Toxxyc mentioned. You will want to try and keep the goods from your customer safe and keep all the retards out. Also try to bolt your hubs onto something, Liberty LAN has lost a few 48 port hubs in the past. Which brings us to the next 2 VERY important things...

-Have a sign that says that in no way that you or the venue that you are using will be in no way held responsible for stuff that gets broken or get stolen. I've seen people cause a lot of **** for local LAN's because they had to show off their fancy new iPhone by leaving it on their tables unattended. This way you can avoid all that and have the people removed from the venue if they start kicking and screaming. Also safety tips are also encouraged, include on the sign that some pcs will be too heavy to put on TOP of a flimsy table and if little timmy and his 30KG case breaks the table and crushes his own junk you can avoid a lawsuit.

-No speakers, and definitely NO HDTV's for monitors. But this is up to you to decide. I've seen fights break out at LAN's because some guy loves to play Jack Parrow (just an example) at top volume, and not everyone likes what you're listening to. They ask them to turn down the volume, and for some reason this always offends them and arguments and fights break out. Worse even are the people that bring HDTV's which pretty much consumes an entire table, if you'll let that slide then I would say charge them double for the space they're occupying. I still wouldn't recommend it though...

[D34thByCh01c3]

Try and get slow switches (I think Rage only uses 10mb/s switches). It would deter leeching, as doing so will bring the entire network down.

BTW rAge uses 100mb switches ;)

1. If you can use a dedicated server for COD 4 that would help with lag when people leech, which is bound to happen
2. Make sure that everyone knows that they are responsible for their own belongings
3. If people have to leech then make a designated leeching time such as early morning
4. If you would like to make more money, have some drinks and snacks and sell them to the people for a slightly inflated price

[Kerbyross]

Youre more than welcome to advertise your lan for free on the SA Lan Events portal :
http://www.lancentral.co.za

Its free to everyone and were constantly tweaking it to make it better.

Latests updates included facebook comments on all the events as well as a new site theme.