Inside DreamHack, the 12,000-computer LAN party
 

Last weekend, over 12,000 LAN party goers turned up at DreamHack Winter 2011 in Jonkoping, Sweden with a PC under the arm, on their back, or packed carefully in the trunk of their car. Every single attendee is squeezed into just three massive halls — the largest holding 5,000 computers — for four days, only taking brief breaks to sleep or check out one of the many stages (including some of the largest e-sport tournaments of the year).

DreamHack is by far the largest LAN party in the world (or “digital festival” as the organizers like to call it), and as a result the infrastructure is second to none. Wiring up more than 12,000 devices to a single network is difficult — and keeping them sufficiently watered with plenty of internet bandwidth is even harder. Fortunately, this year, Telia and Cisco provided no less than 120 gigabits of internet bandwidth — or about 10Mbps per attendee; not bad.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...gest-lan-party