We have an upcoming LAN party in the Library, in the West Wing near the magazine racks. Check the facebook event and see what you can do! Signups will be online shortly, so you can tell us what you will be bringing.

Facebook Event for LAN Party #5

There is an upcoming LAN Party in the Blue Room at Talley Student Center, September 29th. That's 10 days away. Make sure to check the Facebook Event and see what you can bring!

Facebook Event for LAN Party #4

Sorry for the delay after the last LAN party, had some minor difficulties accessing the site. The Feb. 24th LAN party went very well, and the only problem we ran into was that not enough people showed up! All of the network issues we had fixed with the new router box, and Don's generously provided wireless access point worked like a charm.

So for the summer sessions, I do not currently have any plans for the club, especially with most of the officers at home or otherwise not in town. I am here for both Summer Sessions, and am open to ideas. If anyone is interested, I might try to throw a small event. Let me know if you are interested through e-mail or Facebook!

We're doing sign-ups differently this time. We are using Facebook to do sign-ups this time. So get onto facebook and join this event:

Facebook Event for LAN Party #3

Once you join, make a post on the wall and tell use what you will be bringing. I said that you must bring your own controller, but due to a shortage of 360 and Wii controllers I'm going to go lenient on that. BE SURE TO SAY HOW MANY CONTROLLERS YOU WILL BRING, AND MARK THEM AHEAD OF TIME! This will be the best way to aleviate this shortage, since Wii and 360 controllers can be expensive (and to maximize the number of controllers we can connect to 360 systems). If you don't have Facebook, e-mail me (bmhendri (at) NCSU.edu) and let me know that you are coming and say what you will be bringing.

Alright, we are confirmed to go on the 24th of Feburary, which is a Saturday. We are going from 5:00-12:00 that evening, and we got an upgrade to the Walnut Room! Signups will come shortly...

There is a LAN Party upcoming. Currently we do not have a set date, but it looks to be either the 23rd or the 24th. We are shooting for the 24th. The party will definitely be held in Talley 3118 and will start at 5:00.

Also, this time we have two new pieces of equipment to help out with this party. On one corner we have a converted Sun workstation that is now serving as an OpenBSD router. Hopefully this will give us Internet access for the party, and should be able to handle the DHCP load. I will be taking this machine by Talley before the party starts to ensure that it works, so hopefully setup won't be such a nightmare this time. Also, the club now owns a 24-port 10/100 switch. This should help cut down on major network problems.

I will post more as I know more on the party. It is upcoming though, and we will hold it on one of those two dates. Also, the plan currently is to bring Xboxes and Xbox 360s for Halo 2 matches. I would like to know if there would also be interest in getting some Nintendo Wiis brought to the party. Odds are they will not be on full time, but it might add a little variety to the party. If you are interested or totally opposed to it, e-mail me and let me know.

Yes, David Campbell did us all a huge favor and made a new website for the MGC. It's very nice looking and hopefully will work better than the old one. I have plans to offload the website to our own server at some point, but for now that's a pipe dream. If we can ever do that, hello PHP. Until then, enjoy the new look

Hey Guys! Take a look at our sweet new website! Yeah, you've got me to thank for that, since Baird's been so lazy about it. :P

Anyway, I hope everyone likes it! Enjoy!

Well, LAN party 2 has come and gone, and generally people seemed to like it. First the bad stuff:

The huge networking problems we had this time revolved around the two routers belonging to the MGC (a Linksys BEFSR41 and a Linksys BEFW11S4) *both* failed to be able to access the network in the Talley Student Center. Last year, the BEFSR41 was able to work just fine, which is why I was incredibly confused when it did not work this time. On top of all that, neither router was able to handle the immense traffic generated by all of the computer users there, and when a large number of DHCP requests were made, the routers crashed (DHCP, in short, is what lets the router assign IP addresses and automagically configure your PC for the router's network). This is rather surprising because the BEFSR41 router worked fine last year, but did not work at all this year. The BEFSR41 got the blowtorch treatment after the LAN party, the BEFW11S4 will be kept around since it can still be used as a wireless access point. To combat bad equipment in the future, I have a long term and a short term goal. The short term goal is to get an older PC (preferably this old Sun Ultra 5 sitting at my feet) to work as a router. One PC loaded with a Linux- or BSD-based firewall system will be as good as an older-generation Cisco router, if not a newer generation model. The long term goal is to set up the club so that we can buy some nice networking equipment instead of the hackjob equipment we have now. This may, unfortunately, mean charging a small fee at the door. Once I find out how much the club can be appropriated, I'll let you all know.

On the plus side, everyone seemed to have a very god time at the party. About 40-50 people came, many from the last LAN party but newcomers stumbled in and had a good time. The console setup worked perfectly, albeit we were a bit late in setting that up. The Xboxes and Xbox 360s played nicely together and people who came to play Halo 2 (and other Xbox games) seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once everyone got up on Static IP addresses, people were able to play across the network with no problem, and the two switches we used communicated with each other quite nicely (unlike last time, where people on one side of the network couldn't see people on the other side). We ended up not playing Enemy Territory, FEAR Combat, or Warcraft III much to my disappointment, but I bet if we had enough time we could have hit at least one of those titles. Special thanks to Jason Kwon for donating a FEAR Combat server to the party, even though we weren't able to set up and use it in time.

If you're missing anything, feel free to e-mail or AIM (or otherwise pester me) about what you are missing. We seem to have come across a few ethernet cables and some other random trinkets.

Overall it was a success, but we do need to get the setup for the LAN party down. I'm hoping to have DHCP up by the next event and get the Internet working across our network too.

At the party, Kyle Bolton mentioned that he could get ahold of the Sullivan Activity Room and we could perhaps set up mini-events in there. I will work with Kyle to see if we can make this happen. I also would very much like for our LAN parties to be more frequent, but money is an issue with this. I will set the club up for appropriations and try to find some way or raising money so we can hold the events more often. If any of you are supportive or opposed to a door fee at LAN Parties, let me know.

Also, many of you mentioned at the party that the website was not very well designed. I'm very aware of this, and looking at a couple of options for fixing it. Do not tell me that the website is broken, I know. Do not tell me what all is wrong with it, do not tell me things that do not help me get the website working better. Do tell me if you want to help out in making the website better or if you would like to webmaster for the MGC. If you webmaster, you are an officer and get all the perks associated with being one. I'm sorry, but I have to draw the line here. This website is low on my priority list right now, since despite how bad it looks it is functional and does work. Improvements will be made, rest assured, but they may be a long time in coming.

Pictures of the event to come soon. Hope to see you all next time, and thanks for coming!