I was wondering what everybody uses for LAN parties. I was also wondering do you have to have IPX in order to plan LAN games.

I also heard that it's now possible to network with USB. I have seen USB hubs I just didn't think it was possible to network computers that way.

It depends on what you mean by "what everybody uses".

Usually a NIC, a hub, and lots of Cat5 cables.
Not to mention an assload of power strips.

I usually know more about this but im drawing a blank right now.

a normal USB hub is not used in networking.. it's used to multiply the amount of current USB connectors you can have.. there are USB NIC's now.. and USB network hubs.. (different than normal USB hubs)..

I don't have LAN parties as I live in the sticks and don't have a decent connection.. though I have a 24 port gigabit hub and gigabit NIC cards on my computers. wee.

I don't live anywhere where I could have LAN parties either. I just have a friend that has an ehternet card. We hooked up comps and could transfer data back and forth, but we couldn't play games over the connection. Why?

Did you have all of the correct protocols thingies installed?
You should have TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, & NetBeui(sp?) all showing in network properties.

If i had a bit more detailed description of the problem i might be able to help you fix it.

Well we had all of that installed. Well I did anyway. I had to uninstall it all though for Tiberian Sun to work again. It's called NetBios. Hehehe.

Theres something call NetBeui too.

Oh well I didn't know that.

Yeah, it has to do alot with file sharing.

Ya my friend just notified me that he had a book that explained everything. I should bash his head in.

In typical lan parties you need a laptop with a NIC, Windows98 or XP for games, unless there is a different type of party and maybe some network cables...

The host provides the rest.

you had a standard peer to peer going?.. O_o..

..no comments.

Ya pretty much.

I have another LAN the 27th... It goes like this.
First the thing is planned. A location is reserved, and the number of people are counted. Then the network is decided on. Generally, we use everyone's switches and hubs. The network is 100MBit fullduplex, uses a single 16 port switch as the center of the network, any other switches are attached to that, as well is the main fileserver.
The other switches then serve the clients. Generally some 24-32 of em.

The protocols used on the network are mostly TCP/IP and IPX. You don't need to configure IPX... but everyone needs to get an IP assigned. That is also predetermined.

After that it's just plug in the cables and go...

Um ok but what about just 2 computers?

2 comps? 2x network card (10/100 MBit PCI) and a crosslink cable will do just fine

Ya that's what we got. I just wanna know how to get IPX working.

IPX? Install the IPX protocol on both computers and you should be okay. Note that WinXP's implementation of IPX is not quite that good...

Well I got Windows XP and the other dude has got Windows ME.