@dreamslacker:
@silvercat:
Another issue is the public IP. Is having 200 users on a single public IP a problem? I don't think 1:1 will be possible from the ISP, but we might get a number of IPs available to us, is there a way to handle this intelligently?
Not an issue with most games EXCEPT Battlenet games. Blizzard has a lock on Bnet hosts for 6 hosts per IP. Your gamers can game but hosting games are an issue. Plus, you need to set different game ports and forward them for each game host.
Using a Class B or Class A subnet would solve your problems with address space.
With the right kind of money, ISPs can be very willing to offer help. LOL.. Just last year, we had a Dreamhack over here where the ISP opened up a 40Gbps symmetric link direct to Sweden for us and provided all the network routers required so that we could have "LAN" games played between Sweden and Singapore.
I doubt people are going to host games and expect their friends (those not in the LAN) to be able to connect - however I'm considering letting home users to be able to connect to the LAN from their homes using VPN, to be able to virtually participate! =) Ahh, the power of pfSense!
@GruensFroeschli:
We used pfSense for all the LAN parties i helped organise in the last 4~5 years.
While we didn't use blacklisting / Proxying, we did use the Captive Portal.
Generally we didn't allow any internet traffic except when someone needed it with a good reason. (eg update their antivirus software).
For this we created a time-limited user (30 minutes).
To solve the problem with people comming in, setting up their computer and just connect to the network, we used VLANs.
We once had a problem with a samba virus infecting everyone.
So we made it our policy to only allow people which have an up to date anti-virus and can show an active virus scan within the last 24 hours.
We enforced this with VLANs.
Every port on all switches were in their own VLAN.
All ports in a public VLAN. The PVID is initially set to each ports private VLAN.
On the pfSense we bridged all VLANs (as many VLANs as there are ports) and blocked all traffic on all VLANs with as destination something RFC1918 (but allow all destinations on the internet).
After someone of the staff verified their computer and checked if they payed, the PVID of the port on the switch would be moved into the public VLAN. (For this we used a python script with pyCurl)
This ensures that no communication with the local LAN (except the pfSense) is possible, but at the same time everyone gets an IP which will later actually be used and allows them to access the internet if they need to install/update their antivirus.
Might be a bit overkill, but it ensured that we never had any virus problems again ^^"
However if you're not familiar with VLANs i wouldn't suggest a setup like that to you.
When is your party?
I would suggest to set up a test network at least 3~4 weeks in advance with all your servers you're going to run and test everyting.
Especially if you want to run the traffic shaper this will take some time to tweak until it runs the way you want.
Otherwise, keep it as simple as you can.
Since most people will come with their computer configured to get an IP via DHCP, you could set up a DHCP server to server the 172.16.0.0/16 subnet, but the actual network for the party will be 10.0.0.0/8.
Assign the IPs to the people statically.
Something like 10.Room.Row.Place/8
(eg, Room 1, Row 2, Place 7 would have 10.1.2.7/8)
(This is actually the system we used before we used the pfSense).
This has the advantage that you know out of the IP address the place where someone sits.
For this we put on every place a small sticker with an explanation how to change their address, subnet, gateway, etc and what the IP of the current place is.
I don't think we'll use such an extensive VLAN-setup for one. However I like the static IP idea. If you're too stupid to set up your IP manually, then chances are you're too stupid to keep your antivirus up to date, thus generate problems.
We've decided to do this June 2nd, and the crew is planning to do a "bootcamp" prior to the event to test the equipment, setups, games, servers.
Guess we'll be testing the new RC of pfSense 2 as well =)
