The project was inspired by LAN parties in the dorms on campus. After college, it was a lot harder to meet adult friends to play video games with, and cyber cafes are pretty much dead in my area due to the cost of operating a business (Silicon Valley).

When the pandemic hit and everything went out of business, we picked up a huge wedding venue (and its liquor license) for next to nothing, and started an adult-focused LAN center which makes up for high operation cost by selling booze 🍻

Anyways, it’s a passion project and we’ve been throwing a LAN party continually for almost 4 years now. Hope yall enjoy!

Ps. This isn’t a professional video- it’s a bunch of clips from my phone spliced together by AI, so I apologize for quality and aspect ratio

Hosted a 12 person LAN party last night. This was my third time hosting one and they get better every time! I even stood up some dedicated LAN servers on an old Dell Precision T7610 tower. UT99, UT2004, Halo Custom Edition, and Command & Conquer Generals were the fan favorites. I even had a PC set up with Parsec for a friend who lives across the country. Lag was minimal and worked pretty well! 😁

Edit: See comments for computer specs.

Additional Info: All monitors were 1080p 60Hz. It was a combination of HP 243, HP 240, and HP 240c. All connected with HDMI or DP. I used the switches I got for my original BYoC LAN party a couple years ago: 1 x Nicgiga 10 Port 2.5Gb Unmanaged Ethernet Switch (S25-0802) 2 x Nicgiga 6 Port 2.5G Unmanaged Ethernet Switch (S25-0402-N) I daisy chained them together using a 10Gb SFP+ to RJ45 adapters (ipolex SFP+ to RJ45 10Gb Module) I used several large power strips (like the Tripp Lite 12 outlet surge protectors) and spread the load across two circuits (20 amp and 15 amp).

The table itself was tricky. I used the pool table in the basement and I put a couple pieces of plywood on it and covered it with a vinyl tablecloth. This provided a great sized table for the party, but it was a few inches taller than your regular 30" desk. This made the chairs slightly too short. I ended up getting some taller hydraulic cylinders for a few of the shortest ones, and I got the "roller blade" wheels for the taller ones, which gave them just a few more inches. Worked out pretty well!

Hello!

I've been doing LAN parties with my friends since 2010. It's slowly but steadily upgrading.

Everybody has their own version of a LAN Party, but these things work best for us:

a) Rule of "żeton" (token in English) everybody can cast a "żeton" once per LAN to ask everyone to play some game of their choosing. For me, it's often Warcraft 3 vs. insane PCs, where we almost always lose

b) ETI LAN Launcher since discovering it, our lives have been wayyy easier. After the AI bubble explodes, we want to get some 4 TB HDD or NVMe/SSD to store the sync server there, along with other game files.If you don't know this application, check it out it's really worth it.

c) Projector MagicCube L018. It was like $50 on AliExpress, and it's totally worth it when playing Artemis.

d) Artemis a game where everyone has their own part, like shooting nukes , calling for missiles, getting quests, or flying a "drone". When we play, this file server computer becomes the observer player in Artemis and is connected to the projector. We can all see the big ship on the big screen with all our stupid decisions taking place.

e) Just chill it's about playing games and meeting with friends. It won't be perfect, and it doesn't have to be. Just enjoy the moment.

f) Dedicated file server we're running it on Windows. We have the Nextcloud client and ETI Launcher running there, and we store all files shared by Samba. We have several folders: games to test, games tested and working, and a folder to add all photos. It's all connected to Nextcloud, and we have a QR code to quickly add photos from the event.

g) RGB GRILL doesn't matter if it's January, June, or Tuesday, it's always a good time to have some chuck steak or sausages + beer with your buddies.

What are yours best tips for lan ? What works for you?

PS: Can't wait till Friday we're having another one for 3 days in my garage.

Ok, I added butter fly anchors on all the shelves and additional brackets on the tops. It ain't gonna fall. Still have 4 more to mount. But my kids are loving it! And yes that is command and conquer generals shockwave that my son is showing his friend. It is his favorite game.

Finally, the time had come again. After many years without the opportunity to host a LAN, our garage is finally finished, and we were able to host our first garage LAN. It was a fantastic weekend.

Played some Black Ops 2 and Halo 3. Just cleaned and repasted all my Xbox’s really looking forward to doing it again!!

Success. First lan in my old building. Time to start planning the next.

This was in Glasgow, KY.

Once a year we meet up from across germany and some from austria. Some of the best 3 Days of the year. This year we were about 30 People.

Here are some pictures of this years LAN

Last week I hosted a LAN party at my place with 8 people. Everything was organized down to the minute — even the pizza order was planned ahead. We played COD2, BFME2, Warcraft 3 Footman Frenzy, and of course BF6. Ran from 8:30 to 1:00, short but absolutely worth it. 🍕🎮

Groningen, the reality lan. 300 seats.

I had a retro lan about 3 months ago in an old coca cola factory. With people that ranged from good, to people that had never touched a pc for gaming purposes. 14 of us had a blast.

I have since upgraded to 26 all-in-ones still capable of just up to CS2 levels of power. 24inch screens. I7-7700, 16gb

As well, I registered lanfactory.com

I think I may have to pull out some of the PCs from the first lan. This thing is growing.

And 10 is def our maximum given the space. That 10 000 BTU portable AC was struggling to keep up with 10 people and 10 computers.

We've improved things like getting better chairs, replacing 'al the dining chairs and whatever we could find in the house' with banquet chairs like you'd see at a hotel or convention center. (Compare with the chairs seem here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lanparty/comments/1jsjups/second_lan_party_held_in_my_basement_lan_centre/ )

Also as we do more of these, the 'setup' stage gets more streamlined so we're able to get gaming faster and more reliably. Really happy with this little LAN community we got going here now.

Couple of photos from our recent HallowLAN event!

This is Euskal Encounter's 34th edition in Bilbao! around 4000-5000 participants :D It's also one of the oldest lanparties of the world.

I am not sure but i think most big lanparties sadly shifted to eSports tournaments and similar , and left back those big partyplaces where thousands of people bring their own computers!

Just living the dream!

My annual network party in the middle of Germany. The location was a community building without internet access (rent about 110 dollars). The only core switch was a Cisco 2960 with a 10 GbE fibre-connection to the FTP server for demos and GOG games. All games we played were released before 2010, so the requirements were just low. The server had an Intel i5 with 4 cores and 8 GB RAM, a 3rd gen SATA SSD 256 GB. There were 17 guys, and we had a lot of fun with: HL1 Crossfire, UT99 Deck16, DoD:Source, UT2004, Battlefield 2, and Crysis Wars. I bought coffee, energy drinks, water, hotdogs, instant noodles, and candy. It was a great time. We are all in our 40s now.

For the last 27 years we have been running weeklong LAN parties in the UK! and now we have started this years event which we'd love to share with you!

To this day we get 14/15 gamers & friends together for this long standing tradition.

If you fancy checking out any of our videos or content you can view then here (including a live stream of this year’s event):

TikTok
YouTube
Kick
Twitch
X

Passing down the tradition of end of the school year lan parties to my son. He’s beyond excited and so are his friends.

I just spent most of the night making sure all these machines are updated and running as expected. They’re all running bazzite and it’s been a really smooth experience, even with Minecraft bedrock. Four of the machines are permanent with the other 2 being ones I put together with deal hunting & used parts that I’ll sell on Facebook marketplace after the party.

The plan is to do minecraft, fall guys, party animals, and witch it.