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Rules of the TCP/IP Drinking Game

Like anything with 'Drinking Game' in its title, one of the primary objectives is to drink.

For this game you will need:

1 Master of Ceremonies / Moderator for the Game (Adam O'Donnell standing in for Dr. Mudge)
1 Panel of self or industry proclaimed experts on TCP/IP internals
(5 has proven itself to be a good number of panelists)
1 Rowdy audience of "Hackers" (easily found at DefCon or other Hacker conferences)
4-5 Cases of beer
Some pretty sturdy livers...

The general premise of the game is simple. The audience proposes questions directed to the panel or directed to an individual on the panel. The questions should be something the audience member actually wants an answer to. After all, part of the Hacker-ethic is to take any opportunity that presents itself to LEARN (the MC is responsible for somewhat attempting to enforce this).

In the question posed by the audience member, for each term that is directly relevant (moderators call) to TCP/IP networking, a drink to the panel is accrued. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an example at this point is worth 6 drinks (in this case):

Q: In a TCP packet, if the SYN, FIN, ACK, URG, and PUSH flags are all set what is this packet commonly referred to as?

In this case we count 'TCP packet' and each one of the flags listed explicitly as a drink. The panel or the panelist (moderators choice, though usually I'll loosen up the whole panel at the beginning of the game and then by making us all consume and then backing off to individuals as the game goes on) must consume 6 drinks for this question.

The answer to the question above would be a Christmas Tree Packet. If the panel or panelist does not know, or cannot come up with the answer much drinking ensues.

This is the first stage of the game. In later stages of the game the panel or panelist can negate drinks that are accrued in the question. If the panelist were to answer the previous question with something along the lines of:

A: Having the SYN, FIN, ACK, URG, and PUSH flags set in a TCP packet is often referred to as a Christmas Tree Packet. However, it would be more appropriate to include the two reserved flags for explicit congestion notification in addition: ECN-Echo, and CWR (congestion window reduced).

The person answering the question has the ability to reduce the number of drinks already accrued in the asked question by using explicit TCP/IP and network related terminology in their response.

It starts going down-hill from here... And hopefully this time DT won't schedule the TCP/IP Drinking Game in the Morning again <grin>.

DefCon 15

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