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The Promised LAN

tpl.house

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Re: The Promised LAN

#91

Post by lysace »

kentonv wrote: post #28

Heh, 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…

Looks like a nice setup, but ideally the room should be like 25% of that size. Being almost uncomfortably close to each other is a feature :).

Re: The Promised LAN

#92

Post by anal_reactor »

kentonv wrote: post #28

Heh, 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…

Jesus fuck.

Obviously, as you predicted, the first reaction is "how do you afford all of that", which is a silly question, because the answer is "just be in the right place in the right moment".

Now, the second question is how do you get to actually organize a big party? My experience is that in modern times it's very difficult to maintain an extensive social network. First, people live far away from each other, so visiting someone becomes a journey. Second, people have shit to do, and when you invite them for a beer it usually means asking them to give up something else in that time (like taking care of their kids). Third, in the age of hyperindividualism it's difficult to meet people you vibe with, because everyone has their own distinct personality and the era of shared values and hobbies seems to be gone.

Re: The Promised LAN

#93

Post by x2tyfi »

I love this idea and have considered doing something similar with friends for years. It’s cool to see how far they’ve taken it — much bigger than I had envisioned.

My biggest/only concern - which they gloss over, mostly — is security. Combining networks puts added responsibility on every family that joins. What if friend-X’s kid downloads a virus-riddled torrent, which is capable of multiplying across hosts?

Your own hosts/perimeter can always be protected, but there’s a loss of control with this setup.

Re: The Promised LAN

#94

Post by musicale »

jimmcslim wrote: post #40
sleepyams wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

4K LCD displays can be delicate as well and prone to cracking. I always worry when I am moving one.

Re: The Promised LAN

#95

Post by ericdiao »

dnesting wrote: post #81
ericdiao wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I personally ran into the legacy setup issue for running vanilla Wireguard for my setup before Tailscale is a thing and have to manually manage keys, routing and DNS. But one thing Tailscale has that annoyed me is that they are using 100.64 CGNAT addresses (which is more RFC-compliant) but conflicts with one of my cloud service provider's pre-configured DNS, NTP and software mirrors setup. Using it became more…

You can change what IP addresses it uses: https://tailscale.com/kb/1304/ip-pool

Uh Great. They added this feature! It cannot last time (few years ago) I checked.

I can somehow consider migrating now.

Re: The Promised LAN

#96

Post by musicale »

kentonv wrote: post #28

Heh, 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…

The Promised LAN is a bit of a WAN party, but I would say that "LAN party" can certainly be assumed to include virtual LANs.

I'm even willing to say that a get-together of friends in the same location playing the same online game (perhaps using laptops / handhelds / tablets / smartphones / etc.) still fits the spirit of the LAN party, even though it might technically be over a WAN. (Former LAN game series like Diablo have evolved in this direction, for better or worse, and MMOs were always in this space. It's still a blast to play them with people in the same room.)

The best LAN party is the one that you are part of.

Re: The Promised LAN

#97

Post by uneekname »

I would love to learn more about how to set something like this up. I hope this group will consider open-sourcing more tools and instructions for others who hope to follow in their footsteps.

As some other commenters have said, Headscale/Tailscale scratches some of this itch for me. Having individual devices connect directly to an overlay network is fabulous. However, I can never fully control Tailscale the way I wish to, and connecting networks together with it is difficult.

Re: The Promised LAN

#98

Post by xcrunner529 »

redn0vae wrote: post #66
xcrunner529 wrote: post #12

What an extremely technical friend group lol.

Yes, everyone is pretty technical. The author of this article (ptag) spends a decent amount of time helping the people out who aren't as well-versed in infrastructure/networking.

I am sad I don’t have 10 friends let alone so many that would be interested in such a thing.

Only useful thing for my friends would maybe have been for gaming but with online these days it’s less necessary.

Re: The Promised LAN

#100

Post by musicale »

kentonv wrote: post #79
ajcp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of both your LAN houses! One thing I noticed is that you don't seem to have any art/pictures/decorations on any of your walls. Is that an intentional choice?

At the time the pictures were taken, we hadn't gotten around to populating the walls much. Now we've hung up a lot of our kids' art, nicely framed. Amusingly a lot of it looks sort of like abstract modern art, like Jackson Pollock or Rothko, enough so to confuse guests. :)

Abstract modern art seems to have some things in common with some kids' art: focus on materials, color, texture, perception; and representational art may focus on symbolism rather than realistic rendering. There's also an authenticity to art that is created for personal expression without worrying what other people will think about it.

It's hard to capture three dimensional physical art in two dimensions and/or digitallly, even more so when the art is abstract. The context and interaction with the physical environment can also be important.

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