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Opening a PC Gaming Cafe. Network advice needed

Tags:
  • Security
  • Business Computing
  • PC gaming
Last response: in Business Computing
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July 27, 2014 12:29:54 PM

I'm more of a hardware tech guy and honestly don't know much about networking and network security.
I'm going to open with 25 PC stations with plans to expand to 60+ within 1 year.

My main concern is security with the PCs, so people do not install things or mess with them. I just want them to able to play games and web browse.

Do I absolutely need a server for this setup? People keep telling me I should, but can't give me a solid answer as to why. Almost all current PC games are played on official servers and not local networks.

My current plan was to get a 250mb business cable internet plan from comcast (they're the only provider here) and add in a few routers. Then have each PC plugged into a router port.
Can I still control each PC from the front desk PC this way? I'd like have it so the front desk can log each station on/off and have general control/monitoring abilities over the stations.

Is there software that will let me monitor each station and see exactly what they see? I'd like this for tournaments, so we can put certain stations on the big screen for people to watch.

Thanks for the help!

More about : opening gaming cafe network advice needed

July 27, 2014 12:35:18 PM

GoodGame Boston said:
I'm more of a hardware tech guy and honestly don't know much about networking and network security.
I'm going to open with 25 PC stations with plans to expand to 60+ within 1 year.

My main concern is security with the PCs, so people do not install things or mess with them. I just want them to able to play games and web browse.

Do I absolutely need a server for this setup? People keep telling me I should, but can't give me a solid answer as to why. Almost all current PC games are played on official servers and not local networks.

My current plan was to get a 250mb business cable internet plan from comcast (they're the only provider here) and add in a few routers. Then have each PC plugged into a router port.
Can I still control each PC from the front desk PC this way? I'd like have it so the front desk can log each station on/off and have general control/monitoring abilities over the stations.

Is there software that will let me monitor each station and see exactly what they see? I'd like this for tournaments, so we can put certain stations on the big screen for people to watch.

Thanks for the help!

yes, you should probably do a server setup, more specifically, a NAS setup. At my high school, They had this thing with 30-40 stations all connected to a server with an ethernet cable so the PCs would boot from the server. You could also find a way to restrict any access to important features.
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July 29, 2014 3:19:16 PM

How do the people sign up at your PC Gaming cafe? You're going to need a server that's for sure maybe even mutliple. You could make an Active Directory server and create user accounts whenever a person registers at your cafe, I'm sure the monitoring software could be shared on the AD server. I'm not sure about specific software for internet cafe's but I'm sure its nothing that isn't out on Google. If you plan on having servers to host a tourny then you will need a couple more servers to host those. Depending on what games you are hosting you can either buy cheap servers from ebay or you can get 1 or 2 powerful servers and host VMWare Esxi on it and make multiple virtual servers. You'll also need a firewall with content filtering so no one goes to bad sites while at your cafe.
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