You can dedicate a PC as the server and host the game, also run a client and be in that server. But the second connection needs to come from another machine with the bf3 client installed. Far as I know, you can run "multi-boxing" (multiple computers) from the same IP to an external server but multi-client with different accounts on the same machine, I never seen that. Maybe on Linux machine, but windows will complain of "Already running an instance of that program". Software checks aside.