Seems like this is a perfect opportunity to throw out all that custom jiggery pokery and just replace it with tailscale/wireguard.
The Promised LAN
51–60 of 194 posts
Re: The Promised LAN
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a pretty amazing setup! I think in 2025 I would definitely prefer something like this. However, I think back in "the day" part of what made LAN parties fun was that everyone's PC was so individualized. I remember all of my high school friends and I coming of age and building our PCs. I helped a lot of my friends build their PCs and we all chose different things (such as the amount of RGB LEDs, which I thought…
And a real risk of a shattered CRT screen! I remember carting my bougie 17” Viewsonic around in the back of my Hyundai Excel and wondering if it would pick up a crack along the voyage…
Back in the hayday of lan parties in like 1995-1997 my only monitor was a absolute boulder of a 21" viewsonic (this is pre flatscreen or rather pre decent flatscreens, you could get like 15-17s but they were expensive and absolute trash). One night coming home from the bars, half drunk, in an alley my friend and I found an abandoned (maybe..) horizontal-able handtruck. Made the lan party load unload so much better.
Re: The Promised LAN
#53Seems like this is a perfect opportunity to throw out all that custom jiggery pokery and just replace it with tailscale/wireguard.
It's not really custom. It's industry standard protocols for connecting independent (one might say "autonomous") networks.
Tailscale is this on easy mode, of course. There's a blog post by apenwarr somewhere that I can't find right now that lays out the fundamental thesis of Tailscale and its very similar to these folks' manifesto.
Re: The Promised LAN
#54Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to i…
To me, one of the defining features of a LAN party is a single broadcast domain. I thought that is what this was, at first, but it is actually an L3 overlay network with DNS and BGP and the whole nine yards. Somewhat a stretch for a LAN. :D
Absolutely. I think while plenty of games now can rely on UDP hole punching or file sharing can be done with centralized cloud storage, part of the earlier LAN appeal was sharing a segment together and all the ease that brought.
OS's like Windows can easily share folders and printers, games (particularly older ones) run LAN discovery off of broadcasts, and the lot. Sure, sometimes you can route it, but when I think LAN, I think back to the wireless bridges in a neighborhood LAN between houses we would setup - ARPs and all, in a big messy broadcast domain that worked well enough.
Today I think I'd reach for GRE tunnels to add that functionality if I was them. Otherwise, this is just the Internet with more steps.
Re: The Promised LAN
#55No description of the games they even play? It's an interesting idea. But it sounds like one big "no girls allowed" kind of treehouse with how minimally forthcoming they are about documentation
No games are played on TPL. It's more just socializing. There's IRC and stuff, and people host weird things.
When you join TPL you get a generated LaTeX document with all your connection-specific details. That document breaks down kind of _everything_ you need to know to join, and then you're paired up with one of those primary backbone people to connect.
Re: The Promised LAN
#56Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to i…
Funnily enough the (only) LAN parties I ever experienced "back in the day" were pretty similar to yours: 1. there was one smallish computer lab tucked under a stairs in the science department in university, in which all of the computers had been "compromised" in some fashion & games installed for student LAN parties. Mainly after hours for those living on campus. 2. In the first tiny little company I ever worked for…
You just loaded up your enormous full tower PC and 17 inch CRT monitor in the back of your friend's brother's cousin's friend's station wagon, and made it happen. I had a Rubbermaid tub that I would use to lug the tower and all the necessary cables and accessories. A properly gaming-specced laptop would have been absurdly expensive (they still are) and a bit like cheating anyway.
Re: The Promised LAN
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like way to much effort for playing video games which can be done easier with discord. With how tight lipped they are with what their actual service is, it gives off file sharing vibes.
Or, hear me out, it's just a group of nerdy friends that wanted to hack something together.
This is exactly what it is. There's no weird file-sharing stuff going on.
Re: The Promised LAN
#58Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to i…
I think your definition/setup is the wrongest as it does not capture the spirit. You have a cyber café.
It doesn’t capture the spirit of a group of friends getting together to play video games in a shared space? Or there’s a different definition of the LAN party spirit that somehow entirely precludes that aspect?
Like I could understand saying it misses out on the aspect of literally bringing your individual PCs, missing out on the neatness of everyone’s individuality as another commenter pointed out, but I don’t think they’d agree that the in person, gaming in the same place aspect is entirely precluded from “the spirit”
Re: The Promised LAN
#59Really want to know the rationale of choosing IPSec over Wireguard. IPSec is really tricky to get right (IMO). Maybe legacy issue?
My personal choice for something like this would be Tailscale/Headscale. Runs over Wireguard and handles a ton of niceties like DNS for connected nodes automatically.
This kind of defeats the purpose of TPL. Part of TPL is setting up your own network segment. There's a dashboard that shows who has what working.
Part of the fun of TPL isn't just that your computer can talk to another computer, it's that you have your own setup configured form the ground up so your /24 can talk to other /24s on TPL. I 100% understand some people will not enjoy that and won't find it fun, and that is ok. Some people do enjoy learning new things about setting up infrastructure, and this scratches some of that itch.
Re: The Promised LAN
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funnily enough the (only) LAN parties I ever experienced "back in the day" were pretty similar to yours: 1. there was one smallish computer lab tucked under a stairs in the science department in university, in which all of the computers had been "compromised" in some fashion & games installed for student LAN parties. Mainly after hours for those living on campus. 2. In the first tiny little company I ever worked for…
You just loaded up your enormous full tower PC and 17 inch CRT monitor in the back of your friend's brother's cousin's friend's station wagon, and made it happen. I had a Rubbermaid tub that I would use to lug the tower and all the necessary cables and accessories. A properly gaming-specced laptop would have been absurdly expensive (they still are) and a bit like cheating anyway.
I had a lanboy? case that came with a carry strap. The case was also mostly aluminum so it was pretty light. Not many people had laptops back then. Managers at work maybe had one. Most people had a proper desktop.