Miss LAN parties? Here’s how to host your own without any additional hardware

I’ve played at a few LAN tournaments in titles like Counter-Strike, which are significantly complex setups to account for what could potentially be a hundred PCs all on the same network. However, I’ve also played at LAN parties at friends’ houses, and if you’re looking to scratch that itch, it’s actually pretty easy to get started and host your own without any extra hardware. All you need are your PCs, and the rest is pretty easy to run locally without any extra expenditure.
If you have a NAS it’s even easier
Without one, it’s still easy
When it comes to hosting a LAN, there are a couple of ways to do it. The “right” way is to keep everything wired up on the same local network, but to be honest, Wi-Fi is good enough these days that you can still run a LAN over it with a small number of PCs. If you’re running some big, like more than ten computers, then maybe an unmanaged switch is something you could invest in.
Aside from that, the next thing you need is a machine to host your server. There are many options out there, and if you have a NAS, there are lots of pre-packaged options that will make it a blissfully easy experience. Otherwise, you can run a server on your host machine and it will almost certainly be fine. Games like Counter-Strike are quite popular when it comes to LAN parties, and the server software for that game is pretty lightweight. Tools like LinuxGSM make those games super easy to host.
Your biggest difficulty at this stage will be power, and you’ll need to ensure that all of the PCs are powered correctly. Not only do you need to be careful and not daisychain power extenders, but you need to make sure you’re not drawing too much power on your breaker either. This might mean setting people up in different rooms, or investing in power extenders that can reach pretty far.
If you don’t have a NAS and you’re running a regular PC, then fear not, as WindowsGSM does the exact same thing as LinuxGSM except it’s built for Windows. You can run it on your own PC, then give your PC’s IP address to other machines connected to the same network and they can connect to it.
Troubleshooting issues
There’s always a problem or two
You may run into some problems when playing with a lot of people on the same network, especially if your router has security protections built in. Be sure to disable features like DDoS protection (I’ve personally seen this cause problems at LAN events) and make sure that if you’re using VLAN, everyone is connected to the same VLAN. Otherwise, you’ll have problems with machines not being able to see each other, and you may need to open traffic between them to facilitate those connections.
Aside from that, be sure to spread your power delivery across your home, and not have the power for all of the machines coming from the same place. The same goes for bandwidth, so I’d suggest limiting the speed of the machines on your network from your router’s control panel. Finally, depending on whether you’re using wired connections or Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi should work fine if you’re just running the LAN party for fun and not a competitive environment) you may need to check for interference.
On top of that, if you have a lot of Ethernet cables, sometimes an Ethernet cable can be dodgy and can cause problems for one machine. If a problem arises with just one machine, start with the connection method and the device itself and work your way up the chain. Sometimes it can be something silly like the cable itself, and that’s also something that I’ve experienced when running events.
Most game server management softwares will make it a plug and play experience, and many games even have tools built in to help you find servers on the same network. For example, Counter-Strike 2‘s community browser has a LAN tab which you can use to find the server if you don’t know the IP of the host machine.
That’s all you need, and the hardest part at this point will be getting a group of friends together to bring their PCs down to yours. Happy gaming!
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