Ok people I need your help! A new net café/LAN studio is being built as we speak and I will be a main employee there. It's part of a chain of about 30 independently owned member shops with close to 10,000 registered users with support and sponsorship from McDonalds, MSNBC's GigaTV and others, mainly focused on online gaming. This is what my boss got so far (and 16 are already up and running): - 24x towers w/Athlon64 3200's @2000MHz, 1gig PC400, 6600GT. - Server (2x 16port switch10/100/1000) + shuttlePC as controller w/proprietary software. - Main controler computer w/cash register + flat/touchscreen. - XP pro running proprietary software featuring preinstalled & licensed: a)strategy games (W of Warcraft, C&C generals, diablo series and others), b) Shooters (all Valve games, FarCry and about 10 more), c) sports (golf, NFL, racing games), d) kiddie games (yeti series, bejewled, etc) and e) proprietary browser and, of course, Sun's OpenOffice. This OS bundle is just insane! Sadly I seem to be the only person there with any computer experience at all there (other than the guy who is installing everything, who will leave tomorrow) and I would really apreciate any advice from anyone with experience running similar LAN/online gaming systems and ideas on where to do reaserch on this subject (cause all this is mostly new to me, technology is just too fast for me to keep up). My point : I don't want to look too stupid. Thanks in Advance & Wish me luck. Richard, Germany. Here is the group's homepage click Peace.

Most of what you're running is proprietary, and you didn't list what the software is, so it's kinda hard for anyone to help, even if they had experience with this kind of thing. Also, how are you gonna connect to the internet with that many machines? Each is gonna have a public IP address? You using a router? Is one of those proprietary software machines some kind of router? Other things to consider - if no router, how are you protecting your systems? Are all these systems coming with anti-virus software? BTW, Sun made StarOffice. Spun from that is OpenOffice, an open source office suite. It is completely free, so them "bundling" that isn't exactly a bargain. www.openoffice.org "By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, ‘contentious, but futile protest vote by Democrats.’ By the time Jeb Bush is elected, you’ll be so wasted you won't even notice the war in Syria!

Thanks for answering man, see what I mean? Exactly my point, I have more doubts than info right now. Please check out this thread again in 24hrs and I'll get you most of the information you mentioned, I'll be in the shop the whole day tomorrow helping with the final cableing n' stuff. The problem is that the tech guy is on his "don't bother me with dumb newbie questions right now and let me work cause i'm 3 days behind schedule and you and your boss are starting to bug me" mode. And that openoffice/no MS explorer thing is just a comment meaning that over here in germany there are also many many anti-MS, open source groups. The bundle I was refering to was the games themselves and the propietary program running on top of XP managing it all; for example the goddamned cars in FlatOut have the group's logo (log-in lanstation.de) on the hood and trunk! It just blows my mind. I'm very excited, the problem is that most of my computing experience has been limited to home equipment only and "fixing" friend's pc's, however I am always willing to learn and am one who has IMMENSELY benefited from this great forum, thanks all. I'll post again w/more details in 24h. Peace.

Well, it has one high-speed router that connects itself with the main server in Frankfurt and there is where every terminal we have gets its own IP address. Every terminal has it's own AV/firewall and very restricted access to the hard drives (after every shutdown any file saved in the HDDs deletes itself and goes in the customers folder in the main server and stays there 90 days). There will be no mp3 nor video downloading, machines have no burners just DVD-ROM's and floppy drive. The software running it all is propietary and written in Java, the guy said I need to know nothing about it except where the reset button is in the unlikeley case it crashes (but it is known to crash after buggy Warcraft updates), besides he can fix and update most everything from his office via remote control. Oh well, it seems that I'll be just a damned clerk. More info coming soon. What about customers? What is the main problem one faces with the public when running a net cafe? (on top of the endless "how do I...? questions"?). Peace.

"Well, it has one high-speed router that connects itself with the main server in Frankfurt and there is where every terminal we have gets its own IP address." You're about to find out how good the router is. :-) Does the router have an SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall in it? "Every terminal has it's own AV/firewall" Only concerns I would have is making sure the AV is being updated, and that you are patching windows and java. "What is the main problem one faces with the public when running a net cafe?" For God sakes Jim, I'm a techie, not a businessman! :-) "President Bush is doing everything he can to lower gas prices, including...making the oil companies so rich that maybe they'll get sick of money."