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for the second time, mpcon has asked me to run the network and servers for their 200 person LAN party.

here are some particulars about what i set up:

• route.mpcon.lan, the router box, was a p4 2.8ghz w/ 2gb of ddr2/533. intel pro/100 nic, integrated gigabit nic. OS was IPCop 1.4.15 with the p2pblocker and BOT/block outgoing traffic plugins. this handles DHCP, dynamic DNS, and internet DNS for the LAN. p2pblocker was utilized to filter out p2p traffic at layer 7. this was to reduce connections to/through the internet.
• subnet size was /22, or 1022 (1024.) it’s overkill but i didn’t want to run out of addresses. 😛 first 150 addresses were static. we will be ready for the 500 person event in our future though 😈
• route-admin.mpcon.lan was a p2 400 laptop w/ 256mb ram and two PCMCIA NICs. it was a wide-open router for people who needed game patches which utilized p2p traffic. it was also a backup DNS server for the LAN. it had no other functions. it was given out sparingly and performed quite well.
• www.mpcon.lan was a LAN website for sharing information. axp 1600+ w/ 1gb ram. it was running debian etch 4.0. mpcon.lan utilized the ALP software for caffeine logs, tournament registration, disseminating information, and game-installer distribution (no keys or keygens.) teamspeak 2.0 was running also for voice-chatting needs.
• tmn.mpcon.lan was a LAN server for trackmania nations and cs:source. it was a p4 2.0ghz w/ 512mb ram. it was running ubuntu edgy.
• gameserv1.mpcon.lan was a pentium mobile 1.6 w/ 1gb of ram. this was the only windows server i brought, serving up ventrilo, unreal tournament, quake 3 rocket arena, and quake 3 gridiron.
• our “core” switches are dell 2616 16-port gigabit switches. we uplink two together for servers and tabletop/user switches. our tabletop/user switches are 24-port 10/100 switches with 1 or 2 gigabit ports for uplink. they are trendnet or gateway.

stats and numbers are behind the cut…

We have dumb switches inside the LAN, so we don’t know how much data was moved around. however, here’s some numbers for the event:

Maximum router connections to the internet: 10k
Average router connections to the internet: 3k

internet traffic: 100MB/s in, 25MB/s out tops.

Total bandwidth used to and from the internet this weekend: 280GB.

all the numbers for gameser1, mpcon.lan, and tmn are here. click each graph for longer-term trends.