MegaLAN
MegaLAN
A Mega LANparty event!Dates: 10am - 10pm 23rd of July 2005
Venue: St Marys Memorial Hall
Attendance : 51 / 60
Photos
Overview
Another LANparty even from the Brotherhood, with a name less silly than average
Taliskahns MegaLAN review
MegaLAN was all in all it was a very successful event. There was a good turn out of ~55 people which is an improvement on previous events but about 10 short of the confirmations but what can you do. We had a few non registered people turn up which was a pleasant surprise... although registration helps us to be aware of what we need to cater for (not that we were going to fall short).
Setup was great, Dean Russell and myself arrived at the hall at approx 8am to set up and things got done very quickly thanks to our freshly altered cat5 now with staggered ends... no more unraveling 10m of spagetti. With that out of the way in about 15 mins. We had the power and servers done and a functional lan going at about 9:30 which gave us time to muck around with the internet (more on that later).
Power was great this time round. Power tends to be one of those things that leaves you at its mercy every event. You can throw thousands of dollars into powergear (and over the years... we've done just that) only to have someone plug a dodgy powerboard in and throw it all away. It's no ones fault but it does act like a cancer on the fun to be had at a lan. Thankfully, there was not a single power problem this time round (that i know of) and hopefully this will become the trend at future events.
The netork ran well aside from a few minor hickups which were more behind the scenes which for most part probably went unnoticed by most. The switches that we got on loan from Dick Smith Electronics were great. We've been using them for a number of events now and this time we took advantage of the 1000base-sx fiber ports by loading up Wolfmans servers with fiber NICs.
The internet connection came up about halfway through the day once we had some time to tweak the dish orrientation. The owner of the Don Bosco Centre next door has been very generous in offering us the use of the roof to mount the dish and even left us with the keys so we could get in over the weekend while the place was closed because everone was on holidays. At one point we were able to download at ~70kbs. We will be leaving the dish where it is from now on so the internet connection will be much more reliable and availble. Having said that, its performance will very much depend on the conditions of the day and won't be guarenteed.
It was good to see more people playing games this time around. Thigs started a little slow, but once we had everything running nicely, Dean, Russell and myself jumped into one of Wolfmans UT servers and were soon joined by many others in what became some great UT action! The UT tournament was very popular and it was good to see that people were enthusiastic about the competition even though there wasn't alot on offer in terms of prizes. Congratulations to FaceBoy who was victorious and took away the glowing IDE cable by Flexiglow. Great work to Wolfman who put a great deal of work into the server setup for the tournament prior to the event. I think in future the UT tournament will ned to be made shorter as there was a substantial reduction in the number of players by the end. This is something that we would like your thoughts on. If we can work out a way to make DC++ a tournament it will be a great success. There was alot of BF2 being played and it was unfortunate that we werent able to have a server set up for it in time for the event mostly due to the Linux server only recently becoming available. We've already downloaded it though and it will be on at the next event.
Big thanks to those who not only stayed to the end but helped stack a table or 2 and a few chairs due to Dean's persistant mic use sounding like a broken MP3.
The next even "LANtiseptic" is on the 10th of september, which is something like 6 weeks... not the massive gap between the last 2 lans. Registrations are already open with 24ppl registered at the time of writing. Go sign up and get your friends!
DjZoRts MegaLAN review
yesiree its been and gone. And what a fantastic event it was. With no power problems and only the normal very very minor network glitches, things went with out a hitch.
I was most impressed with the social atmosphere that seemed to prevail. Everyone seemed to very quickly get aquainted with their neighbors and start having a good time. This is what lans are all about! So i'd be suprised if any of the new comers felt isolated or left out, or any of the regulars felt neglected.
Wolfmans servers found themselves upgraded with some Fibre Gigabit which ran better than our expectations and ping times seemed to be shaved to just a little bit smaller!
The UT 2004 tournament went well although started very late. Naturally, we will be running it again - however it will start on time!
Internet came up with some fiddle which will have been an investment in time with the wireless antenna now having found a home for a while - we are happy about that - so it should be quicker to set up.
Battlefield 2 was extremely popular and we look forward to providing servers for it at our next event and future events.
Well thats all my tired brain can handle. Sorry if the grammaer sucks. We had over 50 people in attendance so turnout was good (certainly not disappointing) but compared to regos it was terrible. Get your head in the game guys!