A few ideas.

[jon]

Originally posted by Kevin A
i kinda mentioned the onsite network, and u expanded on it. I am willing to give my all, and im sure that there are teams at every compitition who are also willing to do whats needed.

As for cat 5, just plan on a $10 box of cable and $2 of connectors. Throw it all out later.

I dont think that the materials are hard to come by in this crowd of people, i think that the software is the killer.

Just so you know, you're a bit off on your estimate. To accomplish something like this you'd need at least a few hundred feet of cable. The CHEAPEST you can get is around $50 for 1000 ft. Less than that would less money, but more expensive per ft. And that's for the CHEAP cable, with no shielding. Something that would definately be need in a high EFI environment. It'll be around $150 for that, probably. Though, I guess, you could go with the cheaper.

For connectors, if you give each team their own cable, take an average of 50 teams x 2 = 100, for each end of THEIR cable. Not to mention all the other cables to connect the routers and all. Let's just keep it at 100 though, for fun. You could probably get those for $20, for some really cheap ones.

So I guess you could do this all for less than $100. Still though, all that crimping. And why would you throw out all that perfectly good cable at the end? You could use it at another regional, or save it for next year, or use it for the ultimate LAN party. Hmm, LAN party in the pits anyone? It'd take a while to set up, but with planning, and people who know what they're doing, it's feasable. Of course you could just do it wirelessly, and save yourself all the hasle. But then, what about the people who don't have a wireless card?