Aquifination

Aquifination

Zort is back!

Dates: 10am - 10pm 10th of July 2004
Venue: Regentville Hall
Attendance : 25 / 35

Photos


Overview

We thought wed play it safe and run a smallish lan to get things rolling again. With a change of location to match the drop in size. Regentville hall is next to the M4 - mulgoa road turn off. From the city you get off the m4 as you would to go to panthers but instead of taking a right, you take a left after you got off the freeway. You then take the next immediate left. From the mountains you get off as if you were going to Penrith (or panthers) but instead of turning left you turn right, go under the freeway and immediately turn left. The hall is on the same street as the police, fire, bush fire and ambulance stations.

We ran the usual 10/100mbps switched network. Servers provided by us and also by Wolfman.

DjZoRts Write Up

Aquifination was a sucess! now for a run down...

Network

Hardware
The switches ran perfectly all day. Couldnt ask for better.
Software
Windows 2003 worked fine for DHCP, DNS and we think WINS. But network browsing was seriously broken. To resolve it we pointed wins at the default route to my laptop (running samba) which fixed things after a reboot. Not having a default route was our first thought, but adding it didnt seem to resolve things. WINS was running on the 2003 server but something was seriously wrong. Windows reported error 53 when using 'net view' (rather than unhelpfull NN. After changing the wins setting, and renewing DHCP got network neighborhood going, but a full reboot was required to get it working fully. I would think that it was something to do with windows registering with the wins server at boot and not reregistering when the wins server changed. it could also be a browser election problem. we tried fiddling with the node type but without much luck. i think in the future well have a linux machine dish out ips and do wins, dns etc. as discussed with talis an old laptop would be quite ideal. it would fit nicely in the rack/cabinet would easily be stored along with the rack/cabinet (and switches when they will live in there). it would also be resisitant to power outages not needing an UPS. i guess we could also easily plug it into the console port of managed switches to collect stats etc. with a wireless card it could also become a WAP. we could therefore turn off network management on the switches, encrypt wireless and then admin the switches through WAP. overly complex perhaps, but more secure from h4x00ring. lots of ideas. but a nice laptop running linux for dhcp and dns etc. would be nice and small and wouldnt need an UPS

Power

No problems at all. probably not a bad idea to tape up the double adaptors etc. perhaps we can drill some small holes in the plugs and double adapters and run cable ties through.

Location

great!, would easily fit 60.

Attendance

not as good as i would have liked but we covered costs and made $15. altough one person escaped without paying. probably my fault for being flexible with later turneruperers. just like oh yeah just pay before you go. we might recover it though

Other

next event should be good, we had good feedback and i think some momentum was started. wolfman and talis provided great servers. lack of numbers seemed prevent games like ut2k4 from really going off.

More Talk From Me

Also wana drop an apology over the incorrect time on ausgamers. didnt inconvenience anyone too greatly i hope.

You can check out pics from the lan here. i took these on Barra's kodak digital and unloaded them via wolfmans card reader (running in linux).

Go sign up for LAN 101.

Next LAN well definately have to tighten up on power (as in not plugging in 'foreign' power gear). More rubbish bins as well as house training. Payment will be more strictly enforced before entry.

Anyway was a good day. Hope everyone enjoyed it!

- DjZoRt

Russells Write Up

And so we come to the end of yet another LAN. Aquifination was fairly successfull, could have been better if their had been a few more people but was still good. No major problems occured from our end.

Games, on the other hand, were another thing entirely. I would like to point out that it is probably a good idea to have all the common games installed BEFORE you come to a LAN, rather than waiting till someone says "WHO WANTS TO PLAY UT2K4" before begining the 6-cd installation proccess, which by the time you have completed everyone has started playing something else.

Still there was some fun games to be had by all, spend quite a bit of time playing UT2k4 as well as some hardcore UT GOTY 1-on-1 instabib me vs. Joel, which i think i did ok at considering im not that great at UT. Also played Multi-Theft-Auto (GTA VC modifies to play mulitplayer), which was fun but was full of bugs which as time went by started to make it unplayable, still i wont soon forget jonos face when a firetruck leaped from behind a building at full speed with lights and sirens and broadsided his coupe'. I look forward to playing more stable versions of this game in the future though. The battlefield games didnt see much action, which is a shame i wanted to get some hardcore vietnam action, but oh well maybe next time. Camper-Strike saw some playage, untill i declared it was gay and got all those involved into some oldskool DM Halflife, loads of fun :)

Apparently the quote of the day was from me, where upon zort explaining to talis that "GG" is what people say after a game and means "Good Game", I declared "Only if their gay"

More about the LAN:

Network: Network was great, no problems whatsoever
Power: No hickups either, thanks to the hall owners for accomidating our needs.
Food: I didnt see a pizza box all day, kind of dissapointing really. as a result we didnt have anywhere near as much garbage as usual. Only 2 garbage bags in fact.

Anyway the next LAN is in planning stages, you can register at Auslamers if you like.

- Russell