Wifi peer-to-peer networking tricks

[g***@cyberdude.com]

Say there are 10 university students in a dorm, with Wifi laptops, who want to play a multiplayer video game - how is this to be done? ie. their laptops connected TOGETHER, so that they can play the game? Assume that they are not connected to THE internet, and there is no "central server" - if the game requires one, then one of the laptops will have to be designated the one to run the "server software", and the whole thing goes from there.
They'll be running Linux (smart people as they are :) ), but if one or 2 of the laptops are Windoze, and you can explain that, THAT would be great as well.... :)

How? :)



Thanx, dudes and dudettes :)

[Grant Taylor]

Post by g***@cyberdude.com
Say there are 10 university students in a dorm, with Wifi laptops,
who want to play a multiplayer video game - how is this to be
done? ie. their laptops connected TOGETHER, so that they can play
the game? Assume that they are not connected to THE internet, and
there is no "central server" - if the game requires one, then one
of the laptops will have to be designated the one to run the "server
software", and the whole thing goes from there.

It sounds like you're talking about Old School™ games played on the LAN,
e.g. Doom and Duke Nukem.

Back in the late 90s, these games used IPX and simply broadcast packets
into the LAN. The other players would receive these packets and process
them.

Aside: IPX made this some what easier than TCP/IP in that IPX is
largely self addressing, or at least much more so than TCP/IP. The
choice of using IPX was also heavily influenced based on it being the
predominant protocol on PC (compatible) networks in the '80s and '90s.

LAN games operated differently than Internet based games do today.
Today, games establish a connection back to the central game server(s).
As such, each additional player requires additional Internet bandwidth.

Post by g***@cyberdude.com
They'll be running Linux (smart people as they are :) ), but if one
or 2 of the laptops are Windoze, and you can explain that, THAT would
be great as well.... :)

The OS on the system is largely unimportant presuming that the game will
run on it.

Aside: Most LAN games in the '90s and '00s really liked MS-DOS /
Windows 9x. Windows NT / 2000 / XP was problematic for some games for a
while. Mac had some of the games. Linux had remarkably few of the
games in the (early) '00s.

Post by g***@cyberdude.com
How? :)

See above and ask questions.

Post by g***@cyberdude.com
Thanx, dudes and dudettes :)

:-)