Well done guys!

[Whitey]

Despite the network issues this was probably the best LAN yet.  Thanks for all the work that went into the planning and the organisation of the events over the weekend.    :clap::dmw:

[JonnyAppleSeed]

Thanks guys for a great event great company and great weather :yahoo:

[smilodon]

Agree with Whitey and Jonny 'Baby-rails' Appleseed.

[Penfold]

Just a quick breakdown on the LAN accounts:

Receipts of LAN Fees and income from Steins:   £958.00
Receipts of donations and sales of syrupwaffles £90.68
Total: £1,048.68

Direct LAN Expenses for prizes and reimbursements etc £97.00

Net LAN proceeds £951.68

Please note this doesn't include the cost of the Steins, dogtags or fezzes which have already been paid for which is about £550 I believe

Thanks

PS If anyone wants a more detailed breakdown:

Fees + stein money collected on Friday    Â£900.00
Twisted    Â£18.00
SM    Â£20.00
Tanales    Â£7.50
Lumi    Â£47.50
DuveL    Â£15.00
PEN     £10.00
Smilo - Stein    Â£10.00
Ice + others' loose change    Â£20.68
   
Expenses    
Slush    -£18.00
Cava    -£9.00
Noble    -£58.00
Malibu    -£12.00


We still have Benny's stein and I'll organise Lameduck's.

[Liberator]

For anyone interested, the internet issues were because the first router was swapped for a replacement when it dies, this caused a couple of issues.

1. The new router went for the traditional 192.168.1.1 routing gateway, meaning the main game server was stuck on the wrong gateway (something to remember if they switchback as we reset them to the .1 address)

2. DHCP leasing seems to cover the whole hotel on the new setup as DHCP was overloaded on the new router because it had only been given a pool of 100 IP's. Seems like the old router had multiple subnets set up for WiFi leasing because looking at the leasing table it was taking from the wired pool for peoples 3G phones and tablets, these were taking up most of the IP's and forcing the release of the oldest a bit too quick.

Albert was handed the phone when one of the hotels maintenance guys cam into the room saying that our table looked intelligent and passed it over, must have been the fez's.

Leasing was upped to 240 and I told Albert to move the start address to 13 to avoid the fixed game server.

As far as I know that's how the router is still configured, so it might be an idea to tell the hotel team to check with their IT guy to get everything back how it should be, wouldn't want to be the cause of any security issues.


The second outage was fixed by a 3 pin reboot of the router after me and Oldie found that the power for the locked network cabinet in the function room was supplied by a plug coming out the side into a socket.

[Liberator]

Once again, well done Toby and Ninj for your Cat Herding skills, you have the patience of saints.

I believe that we should put some money aside next LAN for some "-=[dMw]=- ball gags" for the gobby git's who's connections from their brains to their oratory functions seems to be in a simplex configuration.

I'd just like to point out, I had to Google that link...... Honest.....  :blink:

[BrotherTobious]

Lmao lib thanks for the network info and thanks to all for the kind words

[TeaLeaf]

For anyone interested, the internet issues were because the first router was swapped for a replacement when it dies, this caused a couple of issues.

1. The new router went for the traditional 192.168.1.1 routing gateway, meaning the main game server was stuck on the wrong gateway (something to remember if they switchback as we reset them to the .1 address)

2. DHCP leasing seems to cover the whole hotel on the new setup as DHCP was overloaded on the new router because it had only been given a pool of 100 IP's. Seems like the old router had multiple subnets set up for WiFi leasing because looking at the leasing table it was taking from the wired pool for peoples 3G phones and tablets, these were taking up most of the IP's and forcing the release of the oldest a bit too quick.

Albert was handed the phone when one of the hotels maintenance guys cam into the room saying that our table looked intelligent and passed it over, must have been the fez's.

Leasing was upped to 240 and I told Albert to move the start address to 13 to avoid the fixed game server.

As far as I know that's how the router is still configured, so it might be an idea to tell the hotel team to check with their IT guy to get everything back how it should be, wouldn't want to be the cause of any security issues.


The second outage was fixed by a 3 pin reboot of the router after me and Oldie found that the power for the locked network cabinet in the function room was supplied by a plug coming out the side into a socket.

Lib, thanks for this info, it's really helpful.  I was not even aware that a router had failed at nay point - who was told what please by whom?

May I also ask who it was that was on the other end of the telephone?  During the GL Meeting I had been given a scrap of paper by Rob IT with the router IP and password on, but I do not remember being asked for it later, so I am somewhat confused as to whether we bypassed the need for it, were given access at a different point or I am not understanding what happened!  (my lack of knowledge probably)

I think we need to take this further and perhaps draft a note to the hotel for them to pass to Rob IT to start a discussion.  It's important that if we go back this is done right so that we do not get the mess we saw this time around.

Anyone with tech knowledge fancy drafting something suitable and posting it here to summarise the problems we saw, why we saw them (ie what we did) and what we need to happen in the future if we return for LAN XXI?  They can then handle their own security from that info and be aware fo what we did - likewise they will then be aware of the requirements we have.

[GhostMjr]

I concur with all that's been said, good job guys!

One thing I would like to bring is the air con unit failing. The constant movement of players that end was a bit embarrassing and could have been alot worse!

There wasn't really an apology from the hotel that I heard maybe I am being a bit harsh but if my pc was under it as it has been before on many occasions whose fault would it have been? The dripping happened several times luckilynothing got fried! Does our waiver exclude dmw from liability?

Anyway something to think about.

The room was s bit cramped I mean if we do want to stay I guess we could overflow into another room?

I guess we could pimp every LAN like we did this one but would we always have the turnout we had this lsn or was it a one off?

[Liberator]

I believe that it was their IT guy on the end of the phone as he gave Albert the login information for the router.

The initial hit was Friday morning when everything went up and down for a long time and I believe equipment was moved around to fix things, I don't have all that information as I wasn't involved in that, just aware that it happened. Ninja or Toby are probably aware of that issue.

Their IT guy should have all the details of the router changes and was the one on the phone during all the changes that he took Albert through, to be honest once we had the password on the router it was easy to see it was the leasing that was too low.

You were all busy in the lodge at the time and everything was back before you finished, it may have been that we had 2 lines of investigation going at the same time, you were given the details and a phone call was also made to Rob IT which resulted in the phone being brought through.

We were given the 192.168.1.1:6082 address and an OC based password for router running the DHCP, although it took a couple of attempts for Albert to log in.

If anyone knows if IP leasing information is recorded in a normal Win7 Prem system logs, I can look and see what network information we were passed by the DHCP on Thursday and try and work out what network configuration we were on. I think I remember someone saying we were on a separate network to the main hotel one originally, which would account for the 254 routing gateway we had, if so then it would be nice to work out how they configured that because we were in the same Class-C private IP range as their main network, was there two sets of NAT going on or were we on a separate subnet I can't remember seeing what the subnet masking was on the router we got onto, but we had to manually assign ourselves IP's above the DHCP range to get onto it.

I'm afraid it's a lot of assumption on my part from the little information I  have, we were told we were back on the main hotel network, so it looks  like the dedicated LAN part was the issue and we had to up the leasing to allow us back onto that network properly.

There are a lot of questions we can't answer or ask unless we know what Rob IT did at their end.

[Sn00ks]

In addition the Draytek Vigor routers may support port VLAN assignment. If their model does then the solution would be to have a dedicated VLAN assigned to the port that goes to the Nobel Suite. It is also possible to fix an IP to a MAC address so if we give them the MAC address for the game server they can set the IP to anything we want within the VLAN.
This should resolve the problems once and for all.

[TeaLeaf]

One thing I would like to bring is the air con unit failing. The constant movement of players that end was a bit embarrassing and could have been alot worse!

Leaving them under a drip would have been worse.  It was not embarrassing at all imo, an aircon unit broke, it happens, we live with it and move on.  Any venue could have had a similar issue and in all the LANs we have had at the hotel we've never seen a failure like that, so I think we let is pass as a one-off and monitor as we usually do.

There wasn't really an apology from the hotel that I heard maybe I am being a bit harsh but if my pc was under it as it has been before on many occasions whose fault would it have been? The dripping happened several times luckilynothing got fried! Does our waiver exclude dmw from liability?

I think you're over-doing it Scott.  The apology was there, but you're right it was not for your ears, it went to others who were running the event and to me.  At the end of the day if someone pours water on your PC you can work out whose fault it is and it's pretty obvious that we're not responsible for an aircon failure at the hotel.    

The room was s bit cramped I mean if we do want to stay I guess we could overflow into another room?  I guess we could pimp every LAN like we did this one but would we always have the turnout we had this lsn or was it a one off?

It was LAN XX and our 15th Anniversary and we ran the first ever DMR Guild Meet alongside - I'm pretty certain that the stars will not align quite like that for a while!  Overflowing into another room is simply not a sensible option.  Imagine the social disjoint if we put you and say 4 other people into another room away from the main group?  If we regularly get 50 people to the LANs then clearly we need to think some more, but historically we settle at about 35 which is 10 short of the capacity we had in the room this time.

I'm not trying to be rude in my above reply, but some of your questions had some pretty obvious answers and could have done with thought before posting as it would have saved you some time.

@Snooks & Lib:  thanks for the info, we'll follow through with it

[GhostMjr]

I'm not trying to be rude in my above reply, but some of your questions had some pretty obvious answers and could have done with thought before posting as it would have saved you some time.

No worries TL Thanks for the reply .