The Networked Weekend began November 1999. My idea was to get several of my friends together and play some lag free games on my LAN. At this point I was a bit of a networking neophyte so we suffered many problems. On a simplistic 10baseT network allowing for no more then 10 people, we waged war with each other. Our primary games of the weekend being Half-Life and Quake 2.
NW suffered a dark period in its history during NW3 and 4. At NW4 the attendance never moved off of a one hand count and the future of NW looked grim. Afterall, without mad-dog gamers what is the point of busting my chops to organize a Networked Weekend?
Things looked brighter though as my networking skills improved and the circle of my gaming hungry friends grew. NW gained in popularity. At NW5, the network sported 17 nodes and a speedy new 100baseT backbone. This coupled with better quality cables and a DHCP server led to a nearly flawless weekend.
NW6 has come and gone with the addition of a new switch. This powerful new device increased our network speeds tremendously, and I never heard a single complaint about it. :) I don't forsee any future problems with the network either. Oh yes...my big scare with NW6 was in trying to get enough tables together for us to play. I barely managed to pull it off but in the end we were OK.