10 ms·

Honestly sounds quite lame. The whole thing with a LAN party is carrying your own computer and giant CRT screen and setting up cables all over

by pwb25 3y ago

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Maybe for the person bringing the computer. In 1994 I picked up a dozen coax NE2000's and cables and terminators to facilitate LAN parties. So I was the guy plugging those cards into everybody's computers and setting up drivers. What a giant PITA. Those cards were cheap for a reason, there was a reason companies were dumping them en masse.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  10base2 faded out pretty quickly too.
kentonv 3y ago
Having done classic LAN parties for 15 years before building the house, I understand this feeling. That's why I specifically designed the house such that people could bring their own machines if they wanted. No one ever did. The only time people ever even busted out a laptop is if all the built-in machines were occupied. But often at that point the others would just hang out until a machine became available. The thing is, when you bring your own machine, you tend to have to spend time setting it up, installing games, updating drivers, etc. There's always that one person who has to reinstall Windows from scratch. I remember many LAN parties where we couldn't even get started until late at night. LAN parties had to be overnight affairs otherwise you couldn't get any gaming in. With my house, I had all the machines ready to go in advance. All identically configured, all games installed, just sit down and go. It turned out really great. We could get more done in a 12-hour LAN party than most 24-hour parties, and we could still go home and sleep in our beds. (I did still have an annual 48-hour party, though.) All this mean people were willing to do them on a monthly basis or more. Whereas in my teenage years 3-to-4 times a year was about all we could muster.
- archi42 3y ago
  Updates? Installing games? For our last LAN I brought a machine with LanCache[0] installed and mildly warmed up. I convinced the host to finally unpack his new switch with SFP+, connected a DAC and had the host point the DNS to that machine. Having a bunch of people install cached games at GbE speed all at once, on a 100MBit/s internet line, was pretty nice :) Obviously with 10GbE this is limited by disk speed. But a minimal Linux can buffer a few games in 64GB of main memory. I had it cache Steam, Epic, Riot, Blizzard and Windows Update. The cache was warmed at home over night, based on our list of "games we might play". Though Steam was limited to games I owned. [0] https://lancache.net/ https://lancache.net/ (But yeah, I totally get what you did and would do the same!)
  - kentonv 3y ago
    Did people have to install a custom root cert or something to get their machine to trust the cache? In old-fashion LAN parties, we were usually copying games from each other. (Which doesn't necessarily mean piracy -- Steam is pretty good about letting you copy game files and then use them under your own account.) I feel like bandwidth wasn't the issue as much as it was troubleshooting configurations and stuff. But it was a long time ago.
    - ThatPlayer 3y ago
      When I used it at my work for a bit, it didn't require a custom root cert. Steam's client has native support for it by checking a "lancache.steamcontent.com" DNS entry. I believe the rest were served over http; it looks like EA Origin switched to https at some point and broke caching for it. Though Steam now does support computer-to-computer transfers over LAN (added for Steam Deck). You do have to enable a setting to allow other users to download, but it's definitely less hassle.
    - archi42 3y ago
      Yeah, I remember the copying. At some parties we spent a lot of time doing that. Some CDNs use HTTP with post-download verification (I hope). I suppose local caching is the reason for that decision; think big LAN parties with a "only" a few gigabit/s of connectivity (if at all). A nice solution is what Steam does: The client checks a magic DNS entry (lancache.steamcontent.com), which you're intended to override [0]. It then just works. For Riot, Blizzard, Epic and Windows Update I've set 36 overrides in dnsmasq (they supply a script for that); those are branded akamai hosts and such. It supports more launchers and platforms/consoles, but from the big list [1] that's all we needed. Now GOG uses HTTPS, so for the reason you stated that can't really be cached for random 3rd party machines. Subsequently, if LanCache gets an HTTPS connection, it simply proxies the encrypted connection to the correct server using SNI sniffing. Regarding bandwidth: Two games on our list were CS:GO and LoL. IIRC four people had to install CS:GO and six people had to install LoL. We could have setup file shares, copied the data (as usual, with multiple people saturating the first share to come online, and nobody using the second or third share), hope laymen know where their steam library lives and to put the correct folder there... or just let them download the games directly from the client, except on a virtual 10 Gb/s pipe ;-) Though to be fair: In Steam you can configure the client to allow others to download their games from you on the local network. If enabled, you can configure to share with "only me", "steam friends" and "everyone". They added the feature earlier this year[2]; probably for the Steam Deck? One of the attendees installed Baldurs Gate 3 (>100GB) from a friend that way. However, the local download feature wins over the lancache, which messed things up a bit when everyone installed CS:GO and pulled that from a single PC instead the server; so we had everyone disable that. I'm now running a smaller cache on my home server. Additionally, I have a spare server sitting here that's collecting dust. I think I'll permanently designate that my LanCache server for future LAN parties. [0] https://lancache.net/news/2020/01/14/steam-client-now-supports-lancache/ https://lancache.net/news/2020/01/14/steam-client-now-suppor... [1] https://github.com/uklans/cache-domains https://github.com/uklans/cache-domains [2] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43 https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE...

Honestly sounds quite lame. The whole thing with a LAN party is carrying your own computer and giant CRT screen and setting up cables all over

by pwb25 3y ago

Honestly sounds quite lame. The whole thing with a LAN party is carrying your own computer and giant CRT screen and setting up cables all over

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Maybe for the person bringing the computer. In 1994 I picked up a dozen coax NE2000's and cables and terminators to facilitate LAN parties. So I was the guy plugging those cards into everybody's computers and setting up drivers. What a giant PITA. Those cards were cheap for a reason, there was a reason companies were dumping them en masse.

gunapologist99 3y ago
10base2 faded out pretty quickly too.

kentonv 3y ago

Having done classic LAN parties for 15 years before building the house, I understand this feeling. That's why I specifically designed the house such that people could bring their own machines if they wanted. No one ever did. The only time people ever even busted out a laptop is if all the built-in machines were occupied. But often at that point the others would just hang out until a machine became available. The thing is, when you bring your own machine, you tend to have to spend time setting it up, installing games, updating drivers, etc. There's always that one person who has to reinstall Windows from scratch. I remember many LAN parties where we couldn't even get started until late at night. LAN parties had to be overnight affairs otherwise you couldn't get any gaming in. With my house, I had all the machines ready to go in advance. All identically configured, all games installed, just sit down and go. It turned out really great. We could get more done in a 12-hour LAN party than most 24-hour parties, and we could still go home and sleep in our beds. (I did still have an annual 48-hour party, though.) All this mean people were willing to do them on a monthly basis or more. Whereas in my teenage years 3-to-4 times a year was about all we could muster.

archi42 3y ago
Updates? Installing games? For our last LAN I brought a machine with LanCache[0] installed and mildly warmed up. I convinced the host to finally unpack his new switch with SFP+, connected a DAC and had the host point the DNS to that machine. Having a bunch of people install cached games at GbE speed all at once, on a 100MBit/s internet line, was pretty nice :) Obviously with 10GbE this is limited by disk speed. But a minimal Linux can buffer a few games in 64GB of main memory. I had it cache Steam, Epic, Riot, Blizzard and Windows Update. The cache was warmed at home over night, based on our list of "games we might play". Though Steam was limited to games I owned. [0] https://lancache.net/ https://lancache.net/ (But yeah, I totally get what you did and would do the same!)
- kentonv 3y ago
  Did people have to install a custom root cert or something to get their machine to trust the cache? In old-fashion LAN parties, we were usually copying games from each other. (Which doesn't necessarily mean piracy -- Steam is pretty good about letting you copy game files and then use them under your own account.) I feel like bandwidth wasn't the issue as much as it was troubleshooting configurations and stuff. But it was a long time ago.
  - ThatPlayer 3y ago
    When I used it at my work for a bit, it didn't require a custom root cert. Steam's client has native support for it by checking a "lancache.steamcontent.com" DNS entry. I believe the rest were served over http; it looks like EA Origin switched to https at some point and broke caching for it. Though Steam now does support computer-to-computer transfers over LAN (added for Steam Deck). You do have to enable a setting to allow other users to download, but it's definitely less hassle.
  - archi42 3y ago
    Yeah, I remember the copying. At some parties we spent a lot of time doing that. Some CDNs use HTTP with post-download verification (I hope). I suppose local caching is the reason for that decision; think big LAN parties with a "only" a few gigabit/s of connectivity (if at all). A nice solution is what Steam does: The client checks a magic DNS entry (lancache.steamcontent.com), which you're intended to override [0]. It then just works. For Riot, Blizzard, Epic and Windows Update I've set 36 overrides in dnsmasq (they supply a script for that); those are branded akamai hosts and such. It supports more launchers and platforms/consoles, but from the big list [1] that's all we needed. Now GOG uses HTTPS, so for the reason you stated that can't really be cached for random 3rd party machines. Subsequently, if LanCache gets an HTTPS connection, it simply proxies the encrypted connection to the correct server using SNI sniffing. Regarding bandwidth: Two games on our list were CS:GO and LoL. IIRC four people had to install CS:GO and six people had to install LoL. We could have setup file shares, copied the data (as usual, with multiple people saturating the first share to come online, and nobody using the second or third share), hope laymen know where their steam library lives and to put the correct folder there... or just let them download the games directly from the client, except on a virtual 10 Gb/s pipe ;-) Though to be fair: In Steam you can configure the client to allow others to download their games from you on the local network. If enabled, you can configure to share with "only me", "steam friends" and "everyone". They added the feature earlier this year[2]; probably for the Steam Deck? One of the attendees installed Baldurs Gate 3 (>100GB) from a friend that way. However, the local download feature wins over the lancache, which messed things up a bit when everyone installed CS:GO and pulled that from a single PC instead the server; so we had everyone disable that. I'm now running a smaller cache on my home server. Additionally, I have a spare server sitting here that's collecting dust. I think I'll permanently designate that my LanCache server for future LAN parties. [0] https://lancache.net/news/2020/01/14/steam-client-now-supports-lancache/ https://lancache.net/news/2020/01/14/steam-client-now-suppor... [1] https://github.com/uklans/cache-domains https://github.com/uklans/cache-domains [2] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43 https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE...