LAN Party

[Alaron]

My friends and I want to setup a small 6-8 person LAN Party but we are unsure of how to setup the equipment. We have 4 port Routers, but no hubs. Can we use a router as a hub? and if so, how would we setup the router to do that?.

Also, since we have no extra PCs to use for a local game server, we were going to use a laptop. Once we hooked the router into the laptop, how would we setup the system to recognize all of the connections?

If anyone knows a site that would explain all of this, that would be an excellent help.

TIA

[RenegadeKing]

You can use routers as hubs, because 4 port router are routers with a built in hub. Actually, it's probably not a hub, but a switch, which are like smart hubs. Routers they are also helpful for LANs because most have a DHCP server, so you all get your IPs automatically. Now, I'm not sure on this, but I believe you can connect one router to the other with regular straight through cable. One end goes into one router where you plug computers into, and the other end goes into the other router where you normally plug your internet in to. If that doesn't work you can connect the two routers together where you plug computers into with crossover cable.

Now, for a game server. One of you can host a non dedicated server so you can play at the same time, and everyone else can connect to that one person. That's how me and my friends do it. If you'd rather use the laptop, you should be able just to connect it like the other computers and run a dedicated server.

Once all computers are connected, XP/2k machines should see the connection. Make sure you tell them to get an IP automatically. For 9x machines, tell them to get an IP automatically, and reboot.

HTH

[Alaron]

Great news, thanks for the help RenegadeKing.

[glc]

You can use routers - but only ONE can be set up as a DHCP server. To interconnect routers, you need to run a straight CAT5 from a standard port on one to the uplink port of the other, or use a crossover between 2 standard ports.

[Trent Steel]

glc if the routers are auto-sensing does it matter if you use straight or crossover cable between them?

[glc]

Does "auto sensing" refer to speed or polarity?

[mbossman2]

Originally posted by Trent Steel
glc if the routers are auto-sensing does it matter if you use straight or crossover cable between them?

Autosensing usually refers to autonegotiation of the speed of the 2 ports.

I don't know of any device that autosenses the polarity of the cabling and can adapt to deal with the wrong pin out (would be a pretty cool feature tho).

[RenegadeKing]

I've seen switches that autosense polarity. It has another name. Forget what it is though. I'll see if I can find the switch again. It was on newegg a while ago.

[Tuf]

I have seen them also. You can use either cable type with them.

[glc]

I think that's D-Link, they call it "Nway".

[RenegadeKing]

Not only D-Link does it. I looked it up and the feature is called Auto MDI-MDIX.