DreamHack: 6000+ People Bring Their Own Computers To Play In A Single Room

This is info [featuring their own translation into English] from DreamHack, the worlds largest LAN- and demo-party located in a town about 320 kilometers west of Stockholm. Before the mayhem, the hall looked like this. And once the lights were down and the adrenaline pumping, like this.

“About 6500 people come together and bring their own computers to play games, code, compete, surf the Internet, chatt and much more during four days. At the front of the hall the BigScreen is placed which shows information, movies, messages from the sponsors, game-finals and scene-contributions. There is also a massive soundsystem that can bring the sound to all the corners of the hall. Due to the shifting temperature near the gates at the front of the hall it's a good idea to bring a blanket or a sweater if your seat is near especially during the winter event. If your main purpose at DreamHack is to game you're adviced to choose a seat towards the rear of the hall to not be disturbed by the soundlevel.

We show reports, movies, information, ads and tournament finals and much more on our large projectorscreen. There are, of course, some really cool sound-gear attached aswell!

DreamHack have expanded with another hall for the participants this year, that's the hall that acted at sleeping hall previous events. In this hall there will be no large soundsystem as in the big hall, and Gamecrew is located here. So the C-hall is excelent for you who come to DreamHack to game and don't want to be disturbed by sounds.

Fast food are served in the kiosks in the DreamHack area. There are a couple pizzerias within walking distance, Cuccini, Alfredos and Shalom. Sibylla wich is closest doesn't sell pizzas anymore but still has burgers and kebabs. McDonald's is located downtown and at A6-center.

Jolt Cola is sold as usual by the Jolt Crew in the hall. 40 000 cans of Jolt is sold every event!

The power at DreamHack is dimensioned for a limit of 275W (1,25A) per seat. The specifications at the back of your computer (usually 350-400W) is the maximum that power supply can handle. This is not the actual effect! An ordinary computer with a monitor, a few harddrives, a good graphics-card and a decent CPU never gets close to 275W. It is prohibited to use equipment like a coffee-machine, waterboiler, microwave etc.

Each participant gets ONE port to the network with a speed of 10/100 Mbps. The switch is then uplinked to our backbone with a 1 Gbps-link. During the party a group of network-engineers constantly monitors the network on Dreamhack. The things we montior is the amount of traffic, response times, amount of viruses and suspected abuse of the network.

There's a couple of participants who has room in their car, you'll find them at the travel part of forumet.nu.”

[DreamHack]