logoalt Hacker News

madanparastoday at 3:00 AM3 repliesview on HN

The article opens by saying LAN's chief advantage was "nearly eliminating latency" and closes by saying revival is as easy as sharing your Wi-Fi password. Wi-Fi and a wired switch are not the same thing. The one thing that made LAN parties technically distinctive is the one thing the revival pitch quietly removes.


Replies

Sophiratoday at 3:41 AM

There's a huge difference between the latency you get from connecting to each other via the Internet, and the latency you get going via a local network, even if that network is a wireless one.

There's an even bigger difference between that, and going online via the Internet back in the days when LAN parties were really popular, because the most common method of connecting to the internet was via modem.

alibrarydwellertoday at 3:32 AM

The distinction they're drawing isn't WLAN vs LAN but WAN vs LAN. Remember that in the peak days of the LAN party it was an alternative to gaming on dial-up or DSL - even if you had a good connection it was unlikely the whole game had one. A reasonable Wi-Fi connection today is miles beyond the WAN connections of Y2K.

show 1 reply
Dylan16807today at 6:28 AM

The millisecond added by Wi-Fi isn't changing the experience.

Just avoid or throttle downloads while playing.

show 1 reply