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When 750 of the world's elite gamers arrive to battle it out online over five days, you need a world-class infrastructure to match. That was the scenario for the organizers of the World Cyber Games 2005 Grand Final in Singapore. The event drew some 55,000 spectators, as well as nearly 400 members of the international media.
To provide this world-class infrastructure, Games organizer International Cyber Marketing turned to ProCurve Networking. A team of engineers from ProCurve's Regional Centre in Singapore designed and built a solution that gave the high levels of performance, security and Quality of Service (QoS) that were needed. The ProCurve solution was easy to deploy, allowing implementation in very tight timescales.
The result was one less thing that the organizers had to worry about and five days of gaming that ran smoothly.
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The World Cyber Games is the equivalent of the Olympics, or football's World Cup, for the online gaming world. This year's grand final in Singapore saw the best in their sport, from 67 countries, compete in more than 1000 matches. While the action was frenetic, the key to the success of the event was a stable network.
Preparations for the infrastructure began a couple of months before the event, with the initial task being to plan the scope of the network. "We worked with the organizers to define what their requirements were and then there was a certain amount of back and forth," explained Ben van Kerkwyk, ProCurve's Regional Technical Product Manager, who led the implementation team.
"This is a fairly typical network design—very similar to most enterprise networks in that you have an access layer, a distribution layer and a core layer, so the cabling runs in accordance with that."
With the design of the network completed, the next phase involved testing. A mock-up network was created in ProCurve's Singapore labs that matched the port count that had been defined. Testing was done to ensure redundancy, latency and other performance measures of the proposed network, and also to simulate a range of possible failure scenarios.
By thoroughly planning and testing the network, the ProCurve team was prepared for any eventuality that could be expected in supporting such a time- and availability-critical event with the world's media looking on. It also meant that they were ready for the rapid installation that was necessary at Singapore's Suntec Convention Centre.
"There are always time challenges to do something like this, and it is something that we focus on in some detail during our preparations leading up to such an activity. In this we are aided by the ease with which our products are able to be set up and deployed, and for which they are famous," van Kerkwyk said.
Despite the fact that the network was set up for a one-time event with gaming as the main application, it is comparable to a typical enterprise network. In terms of traffic characteristics, gaming is in fact very similar to Voice over IP (VoIP) needs.
"With network games it is important that the packets are reliably delivered, that they get there without a great amount of variance in terms of how long it takes to get from the machine to the server," van Kerkwyk said.
In terms of size, the 600- to 800-port network equated to a reasonably large Asian corporate network. The different network zones, which were created for the different games being played, could also be compared with different zones on the corporate network for the various departments or business units.
In terms of ease of installation, "uptime," network management and security requirements, the demands of the event were arguably higher than that required by most enterprises in their day-to-day operations.
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Showcasing the network at the World Cyber Games also gave the ProCurve team an opportunity to demonstrate some of the unique and advanced features of the ProCurve Networking Adaptive EDGE Architecture™.
One of these was "Switch Meshing," which was used for the Games network to provide both redundancy and load balancing. Switch meshing works by providing redundancy between multiple links, allowing traffic to divert to another path in case there's a problem in one of the links-useful if, for example, a spectator trips over one of the cables!
Switch Meshing also makes use of all of the links rather than having links sitting idle until there's a failure, as they might with other technologies such as spanning tree.
Also showcased was the use of 10 Gbps Ethernet technology, which is made possible by the ProCurve 3400cl and 6400cl series of stackable switches. In the corporate environment, 10 Gbps performance is being demanded because of rapidly increasing data use by new business applications.
One issue that everyone has to grapple with is security, but it is particularly important for an event such as the World Cyber Games, which, given the attention of the global media, could be seen as a high-profile target for hackers.
According to ICM Executive Vice President Wonsuk Oh, security is one of the high-priority items for the organizers: "Security is always the big issue. We consider all the possible factors that may risk disrupting the event," he said.
According to van Kerkwyk, ProCurve's own network management software is one of the most important tools to make sure there is no malicious traffic on the network, while a new technique for dealing with viruses was also used.
"First of all we can monitor the traffic on the network in real time, so we can look at real-time statistics such as how much traffic is broadcast, where all the traffic is headed and if there are any abnormal traffic volumes," van Kerkwyk said, noting that the engineers can look for things such as bandwidth spikes or anyone trying to run a denial of service attack.
Another weapon in ProCurve's armory is an HP technology called "Virus Throttling," which is incorporated into the ProCurve 5300xl series switches used in the Games network. The technology can automatically detect and throttle, or isolate, any virus activity that starts up on the network-giving the network manager breathing time to deal with the problem.
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- The Republic of Singapore's hosting of the World Cyber Games was executed without a hitch with products manufactured in Singapore.
- Resource optimization was achieved for ICM through ProCurve's ease of implementation capabilities.
- Network Security at the event was delivered by ProCurve's Adaptive EDGE Architecture network and product design philosophy, network management tools and Virus Throttling technology.
- Redundancy and load balancing optimized through ProCurve Switch Meshing technology.
- Gamers enjoyed the performance benefits of a 10 Gbps Ethernet backbone.
The ProCurve Networking business unit of HP delivers enterprise networking solutions comprising wired and wireless LAN and WAN networking products, services and solutions. Recognizing the necessary migration of intelligence and functionality to the network edge, the ProCurve Adaptive EDGE Architecture™ strategy is the industry's only comprehensive and inclusive network design strategy that is adaptable, scalable and completely interoperable for achieving command from the center with control to the network edge. ProCurve was positioned in the challenger quadrant in research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.'s 2004 Magic Quadrant Report for Global Campus LANs.
The World Cyber Games (WCG) is an annual global game culture festival that was founded in 2000 to promote global harmony through e-sports. With the slogan "Beyond the Game," the World Cyber Games has truly developed into a global game phenomenon with arguably the largest prize amount at stake. The World Cyber Games prides itself on leading the "Digital Entertainment Culture." The WCG 2006 will be held on October 18-22, 2006 in Monza, Italy.
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Hardware
Software, Services and Support
*Except 9300m and 9400sl series routing switches, 8100fl series Interconnect Fabric switches, and 700wl series access devices, which provide a 1 year limited warranty
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When you are ready to explore the benefits a ProCurve Networking solution can offer you, call HP at 1-800-975-7682.
To learn more about ProCurve Networking's Adaptive EDGE Architecture solutions, visit our home page.
Purchase: HP business solutions, products, and supplies can be purchased at your local HP partner, or bought directly from HP either online or by calling 800-613-2222.
Finance: HP finance plans provide all the benefits of new technology without the risk or cost of ownership. For details, call 888-999-4783.
Accessibility: HP is committed to providing products and services that are accessible to people with disabilities. For more information, please visit the HP Accessibility web site or call 888-259-5707.
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