About 10 of my friends from college and I are taking next week off for a little March Madness action and we were hoping to get a nice Halo2 10 player LAN game going. We've got 3 Xboxes that we wish to hook up and I'm running here to ask a few questions since I've never set this up before.

1) We need a switch, this much I know. I'm wondering if this one would be alright to use. We don't need any more ports than that since we'll only have 3 going.

2) I've read that we need to have Xbox live to play over a LAN? Is this true? Over at amazon.com I read the following:
"You need an internet connection and at least 1 Live account. Why? All Xboxes must have the same patch to play in a System Link game together."

If we all have Halo2 out of the box that have never been played on Live, do we have the same patch installed? Or is this going to run us into some trouble?

If I get the first switch mentioned in 1), and we have the patch issue settled, then all I need is 3 copies of the game, 3 xboxes, the switch, 3 cables to connect them, and 3 TVs & enough controllers. (and lots of food and drink) And that's all? I don't need a PC or anything else to run this since we are just going to be going through the switch. Correct?

Thanks all!

1. I think you are going to want a router to dynamically assign IP addresses. I do not know if the Xboxs allow for static assignment.

2. No. You only need Xbox Live to play multiplayer goes over the internet through live. But you can system link and play locally, no problem

okay a few things, one if one of you has a live account you can copy to a memory card and place it all the xboxs and get the update from live for all of them, this you will want to do since they have added a new map and fixed something for the display.

you will either need a router that will use dynamic IPs or a hub, switch, that will allow full duplex without packet checks. the way the network code in halo 2 works is a bit odd, but it is that way because of the xbox live aspect.

you will need three 100 base T 4 pair ethernet cables, make sure not to go over 190 meters on the cable length or you will need a repeater, that is roughly 300 feet so you should be safe.

as far as getting them hooked up and playing over a lan if that is all you want to do is local play no Internet play you do not need to have live accounts, but if all of you want to play on xbox live then each person playing will have to have their own live account.

okay here is a list of stuff you should get,

http://www.l-com.com/jump.jsp?lGen=p...iProductID=294

that link is for the ethernet cable, they are great pre-made cables i use them and reccomend them to my customers

http://www.l-com.com/jump.jsp?lGen=p...ProductID=7541

this is a great router a bit on the high side, but if you're going to want to have it around for awhile this would be a great way to go. also it can take abuse so if someone drops it it won't break.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...122-008&depa=5

this link is for the home version of the first router link, this is a nice part and will do the job you want it to do; but if money is no object then get the first one.

you will need 3 halo 2 disc, real ones no copies.

and you will want to make sure no matter which router you buy you go to the web site and update your firmware, because you hook anything to it. now you will need to have an ethernet card in a PC to do this and to also set up the router so be aware of that.

i posted a picture with this, please forgive the 2nd grader look, i don't have visio on this machine.

if you have questions or problems just post or send a message to me, this is what i do so i'll help you best i can.

1) Switch will work fine. I've hosted many lan parties using an 8port no name switch I bought from ebay. Never had problems.

2) As already said, Live isn't needed for lan play.

Everything you listed is basically all you need, PC isn't necessary. I suggest adding aspirin as well, a few of my friends had a headache after playing for I think it was 6hrs? But try to put a bathroom/food break between matches every now and then.

Awesome guys, thanks for all the help. My friends, and not the neighbors up there, will thank you!

BeanDip, haha, I love the drawing.

can't you tell man, i am an all out artist. you want a custom tattoo look to me i can draw it out and you can give it to the tattoo guy, want some custom paintings for your house i'm all over that. anyhow hope you have fun at your lan party.

The Xbox does allow static IP assignment. However, it doesn't matter for system link anyway, as it does not communicate at the IP level but at the MAC address level. See http://caia.swin.edu.au/genius/020802A/ for more info. Thus, you can certainly use a switch or hub for system link games.

Make sure you play some original Halo also. I hate to say it but having pulled Halo out at our last LAN party after months of only playing Halo 2, I must say that it *is* more fun than Halo 2 in many, many ways.

I was thinking about this as well. Halo 2 and the "who has the better weapon combo" has gotten quite redundant for me lately. Plus I miss Hang Em High.

As for all the fancy stuff beandip recommends, fugetaboutit. Go to Big Lots for your ethernet cable. $2-$3 ea. And get a cheapie router(use Netgear 802.11b, non wireless got it for about $20). I've hosted many-a-10 player Lan parties w/o any fancy($) gear. Never done any firmware upgrades either. All works fine and dandy.

Make sure everyone brings plenty of drinks and junkfood. If they are cool, they will leave leftovers for you for hosting the shindig.

One of my friends that is bringing a copy of the game has played it on Live and the other two copies haven't. I've never used Xbox Live so I don't know how that works, but is that one copy going to be incompatible with the others since he used it on Live? We have no way of all updating all our Xboxs up there with the memory card idea because we'll be pretty much isolated in the middle of nowhere without a connection to get on Xbox live. I'm guessing that we need to find an additional copy to use instead of his?

the update is on the xbox hard drive. I'm not sure if you can play a patched X box against a non patched X box for Halo2 system link or not, but its not the game disc that would be the issue.

"the update is on the xbox hard drive. I'm not sure if you can play a patched X box against a non patched X box for Halo2 system link or not, but its not the game disc that would be the issue."

*smacks self in head* Yeah, I should have known that.

How do we find out if my friend, who only played his copy on live a few times, is going to be compatible with the rest of us? Is there a way to see a version of the Halo he has somewhere, or will we just have to plug into the LAN and if his Xbox doesn't work, we'll know then? If you go and play live is it automatically patched, or is that something you have to do yourself? He doesn't remember installing any patch the few times he's played it on Live, but of course he isn't certain.

if he doesn't have the fix for HDTV and the map foundation it isn't patched

I know that Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow wouldn't work with patched and unpatched xbox's on system link, so it may be the same with Halo 2.

"if he doesn't have the fix for HDTV and the map foundation it isn't patched"

Okay great, I'll have him check.

Thanks again.

If he has played H2 on Live at any time since the patch was released, he has the patch on his Xbox. It was a required update and was downloaded automatically. I can't remember for sure if everyone must be patched or unpatched to play H2, but that is the case with many games.

Just a quick update, everything went off without a hitch. Thanks for all the info guys!

And yes, you can play patched and unpatched Xboxes.

Sounds great Blas. I've only done the "Lan thing" once at work years ago playing Half Life.