LAN Parties & Bandwidth

I was wondering if many of you still do LAN parties today? I'm actually looking forward to doing one in the near future. Although many games do not have a LAN option(Diablo 3 for instance). Has anyone had a issue with bandwidth? I currently have 10MB down/2MB up. We're just looking to play games like Team Fortress 2, Minecraft, Diablo 3, and Starcraft 2. I guess this wouldn't really be consider a LAN issue since 6 to 8 of us will be connecting over a single internet connection. It's just fun to play together and scream profanity at the person sitting next to you. :P

I don't think any fo those games consume enough bandwidth to be an issue with a handful of people.

Latency becomes the larger issue. But the good thing is that if one person has a good ping to the server, you all will ;)

your router might be a weak point here, but any half decent one should deal with the streams fine. Hopefulyl you don't have a super cheapo one.

Well a good rule of thumb is one network port per person and since most commercial routers only have 4 you might need a switch which a 10/100 would be suitable for or get a Gigabit switch.

There's a few groups that still have them around my area but I haven't been to one in quite some time. Last time I went to one Desert Combat for BF1942 was the hot game to play.

Thanks. I'm definitely buying a switch. I was just curious if my internet connection will be able to handle 2 v 2 or 3 v 3? What other games are fun to party with?

Even if all 8 of you played in different 64-player matches of an FPS game, you wouldn't even get close to 75 KB/s, nevermind 1 Mb/s. Most games are under 5 KB/s.

Throughput has never, ever, ever, ever, ever been an issue in any game (even during the days of 56k). Latency is the real killer.

Even if all 8 of you played in different 64-player matches of an FPS game, you wouldn't even get close to 75 KB/s, nevermind 1 Mb/s. Most games are under 5 KB/s.

Throughput has never, ever, ever, ever, ever been an issue in any game (even during the days of 56k). Latency is the real killer.

XaosII

Hrm. Do you think I would have some serious latency issues with a minimum of 6 people playing Team Fortress 2 over Steam? I'd think with Minecraft, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 it won't be bad at all. But for a FPS I don't entirely understand.

We used to play Americas Army with 4 of us on one router and a 5meg line (may have been 10 but it was a fair few year ago) with no issues. Was good fun with all of us on the same team and a few creates of stella. We didn't have to deal with a cap but I doubt it is going to be alot of use.

Hrm. Do you think I would have some serious latency issues with a minimum of 6 people playing Team Fortress 2 over Steam? I'd think with Minecraft, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 it won't be bad at all. But for a FPS I don't entirely understand.

NeoGen85

You probably won't. If you aren't actually playing LAN games but having players all join other people's servers, then its very important you pick a server with low latency (low or good ping).

If you are playing just within your own network and someone hosts (a 4v4 in TF2 among you guys), then you all have, effectively, no latency.