Network Admins - LAN Party Network for 200 gamers

[IceColdFever]

Questions for the network admins out there. I'm hosting a LAN Party in the southwest part of MI. We are expecting a maxinum of 200 people and minimum of 100. We have 7 servers connecting to all the players. At any one time, a maximum of 64 people could be connected to each machine...I want to know what kind of backbone we need. The game we are playing is Battlefield 1942 and it is said that each user needs 50-80 kbs. Right now we have alot of 16 port switches/hubs that are 100mbit. Is that going to be enough? Should be think about getting a gigbit backbone?

Our plans were to connect all the 16 port switches/hubs to one 16 port switch (that would hold all of the players) and use one port to connect to another switch that holds all the servers and one router (for DHCP). It that a good idea? Should we use a linksys router (4 port switch/one wan port) for DHCP or should we use a windows 2000 server for DHCP?

Please help in any way that you can. I can provide more details if needed....Thanks,

And if you live in the area, let me know and i'll give you more details on the LAN Party. icecoldfever@msn.com

[Dangertux]

Hi, I have hosted only smallerly LAN parties(50-100 ppl). So hopefully my experience will be helpful. You will want to get as much bandwidth as possible in there. The gigabit will be well enjoyed, but probably not necessary, but if you are going to use the scheme you said, definately use gigabit going to the servers, you will find that there will quickly become a bottleneck at the switch before the servers. I would use windows 2k AS or linux for dhcp but u can use linksys just fine. This is how I would do it tho.

Have everyone hooked up to 100mbps switches(NO HUBS!!!)
then have each switch hooked up to a 1000mpbs(1gbps) switch
then have that hooked up to a switch with the servers on it on the switch that has the servers it must absolutly be 1000mpbs. Are you planning on having this with inet connection?

Anyway I find that if you use this method you will get sub 25 pings in games like Q3 and Ut2k3 etc. Haven't tried BF1942, but make sure you have all your server config files set with correct netrates etc.

Tell us how the LAN turned out

[IceColdFever]

Are you saying i should have a gigbit switch and have all my servers connect with gigabit cards? One option we had was to use two regular 8+1 port switch where the +1 is a gigabit port, and then we'd uplink the two main switches with a gig back bone. So on one side we'd have all the computers and on the other, all the servers. Is that what you are saying? Cuz the other way, would be a bit expensive....We have sponsors, but not THAT many sponsors....Last time i checked gigabit switches (even the ones with 1 gig port) were over $200 US. Too much...

Any more suggestions? How would the best setup be? Are we on the right track?

Thanks for the input

[Dangertux]

Yeah I meant get as much gig as u could. But if its too much for you the +1 may work. There might be spikes in lag though.