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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8">LAN 
          Parties: It's a Scene, Baby!</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1" color="#0022A8">2. 
          Anatomy of a LAN Party</font></p>
        <p></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There are several things 
          that are required at a net party, people, computers, games, and a network. 
          The people must like to play similar games, for instance <b>Quake</b>, 
          or <b>Quake 2</b>. They are usually younger, but there are documented 
          cases of 65 year olds playing at some of the larger parties. All partygoers 
          have computers of their own, so they typically have an interest in computers, 
          or at least computer games. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Everyone brings his or her 
          own PC's to play on. Each PC has to have a Network Interface Card (NIC), 
          which allows them to be part of the network. The typical PC today is 
          at least a Pentium 233 with a decent graphics accelerator. 3Dfx's Voodoo 
          Graphics chipset cards are a minimum. At the top of the spectrum there 
          is the Pentium II 400 (sometimes overclocked to 450 or more) and a dual 
          Voodoo2 setup called Scan Line Interleave (or SLI) which boasts resolutions 
          up to 1024x768 while getting more than 60 frames per second (FPS). To 
          compare that with the minimum machine, it can usually get about 640x480 
          resolution with 30fps. At least those are the benchmarks for Quake2. 
          Other game benchmarks vary widely. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Section three will discuss 
          the games that are played at a LAN party, so the discussion on networks 
          is next. Of course there are different network structures that can be 
          implemented, and larger network parties have all sorts of additional 

          issues with networking, like segmentation of the network, switches and 
          routers, and attenuation issues. Those are all different articles on 
          their own, but they will be touched on in the following paragraphs. 
          </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Segmentation of the network: 
          when a network gets large, it gets cluttered with people sending and 
          receiving information. On an Ethernet network, all the packets are sent 
          over the same "wire", and <b>every NIC</b> sees each packet. Each time 
          the NIC in any PC wants to send, it has to wait for the wire not to 
          be in use. When 2 NICs try to send data at the same time, it's called 
          a collision. As more and more computers get attached to the same segment, 
          the collision rate goes up. So - to reduce collisions and improve performance 
          the network is segmented into smaller pieces, with fewer computers per 
          segment, and a router, or a switch between segments. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Switches and Routers: a network 
          switch is a device that forwards packets to a segment that needs them, 
          not to all segments. They don't look at much of each packet before deciding 
          what to do with it. It does this at a very low level, so they are quite 
          fast. Routers on the other hand need to look at almost all of the address 
          information to determine where a given packet needs to go, so they are 
          slower. Routers are typically used to link Wide Area Networks and the 
          Internet more than they are used at LAN parties. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Attenuation issues: when 
          there is a large network, more and more people plug in hubs. If they 
          level of hubs gets too deep (about 4 daisy -chained) then the network 
          won't operate properly. Ethernet uses electricity to send information. 
          If there is too much draw or current being sucked out by many devices, 
          then the network no longer will function. So - to deal with this problem, 
          there is usually one person who tells everyone where to plug in his 
          or her equipment. This person also has to deal with the other problems 
          that people have with their networking. They tend to be a busy person, 
          who does not get to play a lot of games while people are still setting 
          up their PC's. </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1" color="#0022A8">3. 
          LAN Party Games</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The games that are played 
          consist of four different genres that were discussed at the bottom of 
          section one. FPS games, RTS games, flight simulation games, and sports 
          simulation games. The RTS games are popular, but take a long time to 
          play a single game. The pace is not furious like the FPS games, so there 
          is time to think, and develop strategies to defeat the current opponent(s). 
          Flight sim games are in a different category. They are seldom played 
          at large network parties, and are typically played by people who are 
          very interested in flying. Sports simulation games are similar, but 
          usually played over the phone with friends, not in a large setting like 
          a QuakeCon or tournament type setting. FPS games are the most popular 
          of the games at network parties today. FPS games produce a reaction 
          similar to chocolate in the people who play them. They are addictive. 
          There is a great deal of adrenaline that goes into a LAN party where 
          FPS games are being played. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Most FPS games don't need 
          a dedicated machine for the server, but there are a number that do benefit 
          greatly from one. <b>Quake</b>, <b>Quake2</b> and <b>Unreal</b> all 
          like to have dedicated servers. It makes everyone have similar performance, 
          and nobody has an undue advantage by running the server on his or her 
          own PC. </font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1">(<a href="index3.php" target="">continued 
          on next page</a>)</font></p>
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    <td><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i><font size="-2">Credits:</font></i></font></b><font size="-2"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
      Illustration &copy; 1998 Mike Sanzone. LAN Parties: It's a Scene, Baby! 
      is &copy; 1998 Charles Bedford. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
      do it...we'll find you at a LAN party and woop yer sorry butt.</font></i></font><i></i></td>
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