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Inside the World's Largest LAN Party
MrSeb writes "Last weekend, over 12,000 LAN party goers turned up at DreamHack Winter 2011 in Jonkoping, Sweden with a PC under the arm, on their back, or packed carefully in the trunk of their car. Every single attendee is squeezed into just three massive halls — the largest holding 5,000 computers — or four days, only taking brief breaks to sleep or check out one of the many stages (including some of the largest e-sport tournaments of the year). Being the largest LAN party in the world, DreamHack's infrastructure is suitably monumental: it takes days to lay the thousands of cables, and at the heart of the network is tower of Cisco routers that interface with a 120Gbps internet connection provided by Telia."
Think of the smell.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
With all the things that usually go wrong at my LAN parties of 4-8 people, I can only imagine the potential frustration at a gig like this!
'or' should be 'for', before 'four days'
where can i get that kind of connection speed, and how much does it cost
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
But it helps grow bacteria. By not bathing, you're creating millions of lives.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
FWIW, I'm a long-time LANner, and yeah... the smell can sometimes be pretty pungent.
Often the main problem is trying to provide enough showers for 1,000 people or more. Most of these venues are set up to provide showers for just a few people (usually sports athletes or similar). Some LAN parties try to get around this by bringing in a hoard of portable showers (and toilets!), but it's still impossible for everyone to shower in the morning (or evening).
When I was in high school and did the LAN party scene we never connected our LANs to the internet. Usually the upper-middle class kids hosted, and they had the expensive "high-speed" internet. Which at that time (2000-2002) was ~2Mbps on cable. Most of the attendees still had dial-up. So connecting the network to the internet was a bad idea, since people quickly forgot the point of a LAN party...
sig?
Even with all of that internet facing bandwidth, I've got to imagine that the sneakernet trading of all things digital must be quite prevalent. Or perhaps I'm just remember what happened at all the LAN parties I went to during my high school years (in the 90's). I wonder if they take any precautions on such things or if they turn a blind eye?
Plenty. There's still LAN bandwidth too, don't forget (I assume it's 1Gbps locally, but could be 100Mbps... but either way...)
Plus, I'm sure a network bod will chime in and discuss the chances of all 12,000 people using their 10Mbps internet bandwidth allowance at one time...
Check out picture 2, and compare to picture 3.
The air in My Mom's basement never looks that bad.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
But I'd rather have seen pictures (and diagrams and configs) of how they laid out the power and switches. And what problems they ran into and how they plan to solve them for the next time they run this.
No matter how much thought and planning you put into the infrastructure, the users will always surprise you with some new problem.
But that setup must have rocked for torrents.
I suspect the chances of all 12,000 people using their internet bandwidth at the same time was pretty likely. Especially since they asked people to try and max it out at a specific time to set a utilization record.
http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw11/2011/11/22/120-gigabit-at-dhw11/
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/107245-inside-the-worlds-largest-lan-party/16
check out the eyes of the guys laughing. thats a real laugh, and their eyes are shining with real happiness. been a while since i saw such people in media images.
Read radical news here
Yep, the best way is to go for a shower in the middle of the day, or very late at night.
The main thing is that it's completely pot luck. The showers are usually quite far away from the hall/sleeping area. You can trudge all the way over there to find all of the showers occupied.
It needs a proper, web-based queuing system...
I don't know why you were modded down for that unfortunate truth. Hell, I'm a true American patriot, and I was just about to respond to all of the "lack-of-hygiene" top posts with the fact that Scandinavians aren't fat, doughy, yeasty, disgusting pigs like Americans are - Scandinavians actually respect their bodies and take fitness very seriously, and that's where I plan to move when America finally goes all Third-Reich on the world.
I was going to try to prove Scandinavian fitness with event pictures, but of course, there were too many fat-ass non-Scandinavians reinforcing bad stereotypes about gamers. For instance, the Pot-bellied pig seen at the front right of that pic. Does he really need another Sprite?
LAN - Laxatives And Nudity
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
My guess is picture 3 is the aftermath of the smoke generator you can see is running in picture 1.
That's because the Scandinavian definition of happiness doesn't include being jobless and in tens of thousands of dollars of debt, buying big screen TV's and ridiculously huge pickup trucks with money they don't have.
They are doers. Not in the sense that they blow the shit out of anybody they don't like, because they are not greedy grabby dreamers supporting a Ponzi-esque economy built around the war machine and monetary voodoo as Americans are. And that, with all of Scandinavia's evil socialism and double-up gas prices, is why the Nords are happy with a high standard of living.
But keep spending all of your soon-to-expire unemployment money on lottery tickets while watching Cribs, you will win big before you have to move back in with momma. You can almost smell the money now.
You can make a PCI blank with a set of crenellations in; Loop your peripheral cables through said crenellations, padlock your case shut, lock it to the desk and you're good.
You can also buy expansion blanks with the crenellations already in, but you've probably got a load laying about anyway....
One of the photos shows a Cisco 2950T-48 that provides 48 10/100 ethernet ports with 2 GigE uplink ports. This seems like a simple setup for lots of tables. Drop a switch at each table and feed run one cable back to the core switch for the area. If Cisco provided 300 of these switches that gives you 14400 100meg ports for users. Then a few core switches with a stack of non-blocking GigE ports and some 10GB or 40GB uplink ports to the core routers. Easy... I'm sure several companies (or universities) had similar setups. The amazing thing is the built it as a temporary setup. The real job is providing safe power and cooling for all users.... maybe next time they can provide PoE for everyone and require "green" computers! http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw11/files/2011/11/20111122_M1n1M0nk3y_Building_DreamHack_0226.jpg
A lot play games, but some people just go to watch TV, movies, surf, or hang out with friends.
There's a fairly big social element to them, too -- it's one of the few places where you can go to a pub/bar and be surrounded by likeminded geeks, for example.
The current system intentionally encourages exercise! Two or more round trips when you find them occupied.
I never was present at any official, large LAN parties, but I have hosted/attended several back in my high school days for just with close circle of friends. Size was never more than 12 people and the length was about three days. It is actually very simple formula with nothing really interesting or sinister about it
Essentially the host orginised the event based on when his house will be free (ie. Parents out). He would make some space in the living room by moving a couch to the side and getting one or two large tables in with some chairs. Ideally he would also stock up the fridge with drinks and have a hub or a switch (With at least 12 ports).
Attendees must bring with them their computer, monitor, power strip and all the cabling that goes with it. On very rare ocation we would decide during organisation stage on what games would be installed, but in majority of cases everyone would just bring their entire collection of CDs and external hard drives with pirated games. Some extra cables also come in handy because as a rule at least someone will forget a power strip or a network cable.
First half of the day would consist of assembling everyone's machines and installing/copying whatever games we decide we will be playing. Normally everyone would have their drives fully shared, so after the software are installed everyone just browses each other's PCs and external drives for anything interesting to copy (Movies, games, music, porn, etc). Once everyone finishes installing the games/had their fill of copying the we start plaing games. Starcraft, Quake 2, Counter Strike, Total Annihilation were very popular choises.
In terms of food, we would either pool the money for pizzas or car pool to go the nearest shopping centre. In terms of sleeping arrengments everyone just finds a free couch/bed or in worst case on the floor in a sleeping bag. Othervise it is just gaming non-stop with nothing else in the between. That is where the smell comment comes from: By second day of just sitting around eating junk food and gaming everyone starts to smell earthly.
The party ends at the agreed time (Normally at least half a day before parents of the host come back) and that really is it. Large ones are probably vastly different since with more people further organisation will be needed. Entire thing can be held in a net cafe, but then you need to pay and just lacked certain charm. Certanly there won't be any swapping of pirated materials and porn :-)
The taxation in Sweden is significant, but you have to earn a lot of money to cross 50% taxation in Sweden, and it's capped at ~56% on income if you exclude employers extra costs.
Immigration to Sweden from the EU is extremely simple. From the US it's a bit more work, but should be quite doable. Swedish is from the same language tree as English so written language is doable. The spoken language is one of the few with a song-song intonation and can be quite hard to get right.
A modern 23" (TFT) display draws less than 40W in use, so at 230V it would be 0.17A. A proliant DL160 with 4 SATA disks and 1xXeon (not a gaming rig!) draws around 160W at bootup. A modern workstation (i3-i5-i7) draws around 70-120W. I have no idea about high-end graphic cards.
The electrical setup shuldn't be that different from one major venue such as stadio concert or music festival - industrial size diesel generators, usually available at up to 1000kW or more, and somewhat easy to rent. 1000kW is almost enough for 5000 computers at a conservative estimate of 200W of real consumption per unit.
Oh, then I guess I have indeed been to a LAN party, but just didn't know that's what it was called. I was Resident Faculty at a dorm for a while when I first started teaching. It was before I was married so it was just me and the dog. This was at a small Catholic liberal arts college in the bluffs of Minnesota along the Mississippi, so in the winter there was nothing at all to do outside at night. We'd drag out our computers and play Starcraft or Total Annihilation for hours and hours. Drink Leinenkugel that we bought on the Wisconsin side and eat pizza if we could get a pizzeria from the small nearby town to deliver in the heavy snow.
When we got wasted enough, we'd take cafeteria trays and use them to slide down the side of a rather steep bluff. Then we'd take someone to the hospital. In the wee hours we'd stand on the roof and look at the Northern Lights.
The son of the mayor of a medium-sized city lived in the dorm and always had great weed. The dorm was in a building that was once a monastery. One wing was said to be haunted and a lot of weird stuff did happen over there, but predictably, it usually happened when we were buzzed. I know I was supposed to look out for these kids but really it was all much harmless fun and nobody got hurt. I was a newly-minted academic, just a few years older than my charges. I did occasionally give a little advice and a sympathetic ear, but mostly just made sure nobody went overboard.
OK, so now I know. Those were "LAN parties".
Thanks.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You misunderstand how switching power supplies work.
They have a sticker number '1000W' - this is (ideally) the maximum amount of power they supply.
They will also have an efficiency curve, which may vary from - say - 50% at 10W to 90% at 700W, and 80% at 1000W.
The important thing is the efficiency at the amount the load draws.
If the efficiency is 90%, the load draws 600W, then the amount drawn from the line is 660W.
If the load draws 600W, with a 600W power supply that's 80% efficient, it's 750W.
I measured the electrical load of every computer in our office. That's a lot of computers. I have the spreadsheets to back it up :)
Power draw for a standard 17" 4:3 dell LCD display is 0.7 amps, computers are almost universally 1.2-1.3 amps regardless of era. A dell 30" display draws nearly 1.8 amps. 22-24" displays draw 1.5 amps. Again, not theoretical, this is actually metered. We used both a kill-a-watt and clamp meters to independently verify the results.
moox. for a new generation.
Back when I was younger, I used to go to LAN parties all the time. Typically with friends, at their place, but twice I went to a big LAN party. In each of the big LAN parties, the drama was almost more overwhelming than the BO. It was like being in a room full of three-days-unbathed tween drama queen girls that were obese and all used to being the center of their own worlds. Tempers flared easily when no one was around to bring everyone snacks and drinks and take away their piss jugs.
And the thievery. God Jesus did shit ever get stolen. Dozens of people got their shit stolen at both of the big LAN parties I went to. Apparently some shady people would show up with shitty computers, set up a place, and then go around looting. No one would ever think to stop them from walking out with a computer or hardware, because people were doing it all the time. Oh, and the poopsockers. You couldn't play a strategy game without being cheesed to death immediately at the beginning of the game. People with superior skills would send a worker unit over to harass and maybe kill your guys before you could get a soldier out, and then thirty seconds later be in your base with late game units. Oh, and the cheating. People wouldn't admit that their 100% headshot rate and 100:0 kill/death ratio was fake. When they did, cue drama and usually violence.
In short, fuck big LAN parties. They have none of the charm of the small group gaming sessions, and all of the downsides of playing with a bunch of socially inept nerds with strange senses of humor.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Dreamhack(this event) hosted a huge starcraft 2 tournament, giving away a few hundred grand in prizes between SC2, street fighter 4, and quake arena. Most of the people at this event just played games together in various un-sponsored tournaments. However around 100,000 people tuned in to watch the SC2 tournaments. Kind of a big deal.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Yet another ignorant liar that knows nothing about Scandinavia.
The average tax rate is 32% on taxable income, after deductions and a flat rate discount. The tax rate is proportional, with exceptions for the lowest incomes. The highest income groups pay an additional extra tax on income above a certain threshold. This tax gives you an automatic government paid pension. I can only speak for my own Scandinavian country, but it's mostly the same.
You may deduct interest payments on mortgages, travel expenses if you have to commute a long distance (minimum limits apply), expenses due to your health (special needs equipment) and so on. Too much to list here.
In addition you receive a monthly cash subsidy for each child below the age of 18, kindergartens and after-school parks are subsidied, schools are free, college is free, healthcare is free, hospitals are free, prenatal clinics offer free, extensive pre/post-birth support, maternity/paternity leave is paid for by the government (1 year at 80% pay). Students are eligble for a student loan from the State Educational Loan Fund, no interest paid while studying, and you only pay when you actually have a job. If you end up sick or disabled you will receive welfare and additional support including housing, caretakers and so on. That's just what I can think of at the moment, there's a lot more.
Everyone with a table seat got 100Mb/s except those seated at Telia's VIP tables, who got 1000Mb/s.
The traffic from the LAN to the WAN on the router, as was seen on the public dashboard, was pretty low in RELATIVE terms... often it was below 1Gb/s :p
It still will not get the stink off you from the guy you are sitting next to that smells like he has not showered in 12 days and has a hint of cat piss.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.