At Ghetto Lanparty we are pretty proud of how far we have advanced our network, electrical, and server technology over the past 6 years.  At Ghetto Lanparty 1 we had a full shared 10 megabit hub network, and we had to desginate certain times for playing games, and certain times for sharing files.  If people tried to leech files while others were playing games, the network ground to a halt.  Now in 2007 we are able to set up an amazingly powerful and reliable network in around 2 hours from scratch at the Civic Center.  We can support nearly 300 gamers and their computers in our current state.

Mind you, without sponsorship, all of our equipment has been purchased slowly over the years.  None of it is super fancy, and we have hiccups at every event.  Still, with our Ghetto budget and years of experience, we somehow manage to keep everything running smoothly for our gamers.  Below you will find information on our servers and network, and random factoids about the lanparty infrastructure.

 

The Servers:
Server Name Processor(s) RAM Hard Drive Network Connection Operating System Server Role
             

Nazareth

 DUAL 2.2 GHz P4 XEONS 1 gig DDR-266 ECC 10,000 rpm 36 gig Western Digital RAPTOR Dual 100 mbit Windows 2000 Server Will run every game known to man... ALL AT ONCE!  Also will do Counter-Strike and any other tournaments.
Cronus Dual PIII 800 mhz 1 gig PC133 40 gig IDE Dual 100 mbit Windows Server 2003 Kyle a.k.a. SuperCrickets new workstation.  Preparing ProjectX2's water cooling equipment to be fit onto it! 
ProjectX2 Coppermine Pentium 3 800mhz 768megs PC133 20gig UDMA/66 10/100 Netgear FA310TX with UTP, 10/100 Trendnet with UTP, and Linksys NC100 10/100 with UTP Windows 2000 Server Counter-Strike, Action Half-Life, OZ Deathmatch, TFC, Half-Life Deathmatch, Day of Defeat, Goldeneye, and all other Half-Life based mods
ProjectX Katmai Pentium 3 550mhz 768megs PC133 20gig UDMA/66 10/100 Netgear FA310TX with UTP, 10/100 Trendnet with UTP, and D-Link 530TX+ 10/100 with UTP Windows 2000 Server Quake 3, Quake 2, Quake 1, Urban Terror, Rocket Arena 3, all other Quake based mods, DHCP, DNS, and WINS
FileServer Abit VP6 (Dual Proc. Mobo) 256megs PC133 320 gigs of Western Digital hard drives for data, 4 gig Western Digital 5400 rpm for OS Intel PRO/1000 GIGABIT with multimode fiber optic cable Windows 2000 Server File server with mods, patches, files, movies, and music.
Hortence AMD 3200+ XP 512 meg DDR-400 30 gig 7200 rpm Western Digital Single 100 megabit Windows XP BF1942 Tournament and more.
Extensa 1 Pentium 150mhz 32megs 1.2gig 10BT with UTP Pigtail Windows 95 In party Web Server
Extensa 2 Pentium 150mhz 32megs 1.2gig 10BT with UTP Pigtail Windows 95 Tournament Maker/Key Gen/Misc. Other Functions
Enigma Deschutes Pentium 2 450mhz 128megs PC100 10gig UDMA/33 10BT with UTP Windows 98 Kyle a.k.a. SuperCricket's old workstation.


The Network:

BACKBONE: "The Godfather" Cisco Systems WS-3524-XL-EN 24 port GIGABIT switch (PICTURED BELOW). Has 24 10/100 ports and 2 GIGABIT expansion ports that provide connectivity to the fiber optic gigabit file server. Lives on Ghetto rack and costed $1100 on Ebay. It is the single most expensive piece of equipment ever purchased by Ghetto Lanparty.

 

CLIENT CONNECTIVITY:  6 new D-Link DES-1024D's!  These 24 port 10/100 switches give the fastest network connection ever possible at Ghetto Lanparty.  With a capacity for 138 fully 10/100 switched clients, added with the 96 we have from the old Compaq switches, we have enough network for almost 240 clients now.

 

FILESERVER CONNECTIVITY:  The 200+ gig Fileserver sports the fastest connection on the network.  With a 1 GIGABIT multimode fiber optic connection, it has the capability to allow MANY people to download from it at once.  It usually hovers at 8+ megabytes per second all night long being downloaded from the attendees, and it's current record for an entire night is over 300 gigs downloaded from it!

From excellent DVD quality movie rips by me, to thousands of MP3's, game files, and everything in between, you can have many things to check out when your back at home, after the lanparty has ended.

 

BACKBONE CABLING: (Blue cable) The blue cable you will see laying around is our backbone cable. They are crossover cables which carry data from one segment of the network, back to the Godfather, the Cisco backbone.  Try not to rape the blue cables if you see them, as all of Ghetto Lanparty's inter-switch traffic traverses these wires.

SERVER CABLING: (Yellow and Orange cable) Yellow and orange cables are the Cat5 and fiber optic cable for the servers respectively. These cables provide server connectivity to the backbone of the network. If you are playing a game on one of the Ghetto Lanparty servers, the data is going through these cables.

CLIENT CABLING: (Gray cable) We have gobs and gobs of Cat5 and Cat5e rated cable to connect everyone together. They are homemade patch cords that are approximately 25 feet long. About half of the cable is nice Belden brand cable which wasn't cheap, and they other is Home Depot purchased BICC General cable, which is not as nice. However, both types have lasted many lanparties without failures, and this is after being trampled on hundreds of times by feet, chairs, tables, and everything else.