Technical guide for setting up a LAN party?
Are there any good how-to or technical guides for setting up a LAN and/or any other sundry issues surrounding putting together a LAN party? The greener the intended audience the better. (I am fairly competent around hardware, but my LAN parties have been plagued with all kinds of network errors and technical issues anyway.)
Or is this the kind of thing that has to be done on a game-specific basis?
Borrowing liberally from the other answers, here are my suggestions:
Keep It Simple. This applies to everything at the LAN. The simplest solution is almost always the best one.
Networking - Hardware Side. (This is assuming you're going to have 24 or fewer users. If you're going to have more than that, you're probably going to need more than one switch.) Get yourself one large switch that can accomodate everyone, or buy several small switches. Allow for one router between everyone and the link to the outside world. If someone wants to jack in their own router and try to use it as a switch, shut them down on that pronto. Dealing with double-NAT'ed machines is the bane of network setups and goes against rule 1 above. Avoid Wireless like the plague.
Networking - Software Side. If you're following the above suggestion then it will be no problem having everyone set their machines to DHCP and let the router handle passing out the IP addresses. Windows Firewall can play havoc with some games, so be sure you know how to configure it for any games you may be playing at the LAN. Make sure everyone has had their machine scanned for viruses and spyware before they hook up to the network - no one wants to be dealing with the latest round of infections instead of playing their games.
Power Considerations. I can't stress this one enough - DON'T DAISY CHAIN POWER STRIPS TOGETHER. Inevitably you end up with the guy whose power strip is in the middle of the chain wanting to leave before anyone else. Have designated power strips that everyone will plug their strip into. Also make sure that the power feeds in the LAN area can handle the juice all the computers and hardware will be drawing.
Sound Considerations. Make sure everyone knows that they need to bring a set of headphones. Sure, you could just have everyone set up their speakers, but that level of cacaphony is going to get annoying really fast.
Game Considerations. Make sure everyone knows what games are going to be played at the LAN and that they already have them installed and are on the same patch level before you get rolling - it will samve time. Also, if there are going to be a large number of players, consider setting up a dedicated server for whatever Game Du Jour you're going to be playing (if the game allows it). Also, have alternate games ready in the event that someone doesn't want to play CODBLOPS or whatever everyone else is playing. Having an Xbox or Wii set up off in a corner is a good idea.
Food & Bathroom considerations. If you're holding this at someone's house, make sure everyone knows what you're doing for food and plan appropriately. One medium pizza per gamer is usually a good rule of thumb if you're ordering in, and don't forget to tip the delivery guy. If you're not ordering in, make sure everyone brings something or is willing to fork over some cash for the eats that will be provided. Also, make sure everyone knows where the restrooms are and who to notify if there are any problems with them.
It would help if you specified a platform... I found that on PC's the windows firewall is the worst culprit of annoying issues during our LAN party's. Recently I started using an old 24 port Dell power connect switch and using all static IP's. This works well for games with true LAN support but not so good for games that require DRM that talks back to an outside server. Good rule of thumb for networking is to keep it as simple as possible... If you can get them all on one switch that is your best bet. A couple things I suggest against:
Wireless: if you can at all help it keep them off of wireless. There are just too many variables with it... A 2.4/5.0 ghz cordless phone on the same channel can cause random connection drops. Interference with other access points (even your own if you have more than one) can cause random outages or issues with only one person sitting in the wrong place. Not to mention in my experience most consumer grade (netgear, linksys, d-link etc..) aren't the highest quality and may not be able to handle the traffic of a large LAN party. They can also be just generally unreliable. If you do decide you need to go wireless get a Ubiquity Nanosation or anything from Ruckus wireless, don't just get a cheap access point.
Double NATing: I see this on Super User fairly regularly. People try and use consumer routers that operate at layer 3 and 2 as pure layer 2 switches. These devices need to be told not to distribute IP addresses or NAT. So after daisy chaining them together you end up with 3-4 different subnets with 4 friends on 192.168.1.1/24, 5 friends on 192.168.0.1/24 and everyone else on 192.168.2.1/24. Now all this data has to be routed between subnets causing an extra level of complexity. Also your computers won't have info on the other computers on the network in their ARP cache since they are on different subnets. So when computer A on 192.168.1.1/24 want's to talk with computer B on 192.168.0.1/24 they need to go through 2 or even 3 different routers.
Overall the most important part out of the above is to keep it as simple as possible....