Inside LAN-O-THON

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Introduction

This blog is an inside look into what it takes to put on RHA LAN-O-THON v4.0, a 50 person LAN Party happening Friday, October 26 2007 for the residence of USF in Cypress E.



I want to share my setup with you so you can use some of my ideas at your events and I can use yours. I want to create a LAN Party Guide that stays up to date as technology and society changes by using the blog format. In the coming months I'm going to write guides on how to install different game servers and plugins, setup a file server, setup pfsense to mange and track users, install and config Freebsd to run a web server to power ALP and other software.

About LAN-O-THON

LAN-O-THON is a LAN Party that was started by The Residence Hall Association (RHA) at the University of South Florida (USF) and has become a semiannual event.

Some History...

v 1.0 LAN-O-THON first started in 04-05 in the Andros Community Room and had about __ people in the BYOC. I'm told it was memorable because one of the lights in the room caught fire or something like that.

v2.0 After the fiasco in the Andros Building the Event was moved to Holly J.

v2.5 The main games were Unreal Tournament 2004 and Warcraft III;

v3.0 This was when I got involved. I ran the network and the main game server. the predominant game was Half-life 2: Deathmatch

v3.5 I planned the BYOC for this one. We had nice need rows and zero network problems. We played Counter-Strike: Source and Half-life 2: Deathmatch;

v4.0 I planned this event to the max. We had a great event. We played Team Fortress 2 and Half-life 2: Deathmatch;

Now I'm working on planning v4.5 and it is going to be bigger and better and I'm blogging every step of the process.

About Me

I am a Architecture major at USF but one of my hobbies is tinkering with computers and the best way to share this is through LAN Parties. I enjoy working with computers, networks and web design. I started the Cypress LAN Party Group in the dorms here at USF and I run a monthly LAN Party in the dorms. I am also on the RHA programing committee and I'm in charge of the RHA LAN-O-THON, the event that this blog is all about.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message or just leave a comment.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi,
how many dedicated servers do you run on that 1.4ghz laptop you have at your LANparty?
thanks

contact me with kylesenior[at]adam.com.au
replace the [at] with @

Anonymous said...

Croc,

I am planning a similar LAN event at my school in California, but I am confused about something and I have not been able to find any info anywhere. What games come along with the temporary Steam subscription? We would like to play TF2 as well as Portal at the event, but I do not know if Portal would be available. If you are not sure, could you give me the email address for Arsenio, the Valve rep that contacted you? I can't find any contact information anywhere for valve reps.

Thank you in advance!

Mike Hernandez
slick601[at]gmail[dot]com