At no stage can the tournament afford any network downtime and due to the competitive nature of the event, all gameplay must be in real-time with little or no latency: no easy task considering ‘traffic’ volume has virtually doubled year-uponyear since the Seoul Games in 2000.

“Our requirements are not dissimilar to a typical enterprise network. We need to connect 600 PCs, 40 XBOX consoles, 15 mobile devices and all the journalists’ notebooks to the network; approximately 1,000 users in total. Moreover, we have to broadcast live action from two stages on two video channels live across the web so that 35 million global viewers can enjoy a quality experience,” explains Sang Hong, IT operations manager, World Cyber Games. “To do this, and to handle several games running simultaneously, we need an extremely reliable, high-performance network infrastructure that is highly available and secure.”

“Gaming is like any other utility networking, such as video surveillance or Internet Protocol (IP) telephony,” explains Chris Ruybal, technical consultant, HP ProCurve. “The WCG transmits mission-critical information in real-time and the last thing it can afford is latency, jitter or delay. Therefore, data packets moving between gaming machines and servers must be carried over the network at a consistent speed.”

Shiva Yoon, World Cyber Games tournament coordinator agrees: “Network speed is very important because if we have any delay during the match then players cannot show their very best skill in our event.”

A next-generation ProCurve 8212 core switch formed the heart of the ProCurve Adaptive Network solution. The 8212 switch provides high bandwidth and is the industry’s first core switch to come with a Lifetime Warranty♦. ProCurve 5400zl series switches distributed advanced intelligence to the edge of the WCG network whilst, due to the venue’s size, numerous ProCurve 3500yl, 2610, and 2900 series managed switches were strategically placed throughout the game arena. Ten Gigabit Ethernet links connected these switches to the core.

In addition, within the 8212 switch, two ProCurve Wireless Edge Services Modules (WESM) were installed in a redundant configuration, to deliver secure, advanced wireless connectivity. Ten ProCurve Radio Ports 230 enabled the configuration of three Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs); one for the network administrators, one for the gamers and one for the press.

Network security is essential during the tournament because any malicious or unexpected activity could have wide-ranging implications for the tournament’s success and the competition’s integrity. For this reason, ProCurve Network Immunity Manager (NIM) was deployed at this year’s event to correlate network activity and provide ongoing monitoring of internal as well as external security threats. In addition, ProCurve’s network design was segregated into individual Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) to ensure rival gamers were unable to attack their competitors via the network.

With HP Virus Throttling and industry standard ‘S-flow’ statistical sampling technology built into ProCurve products, onsite network administrators were able to sample and analyse data traffic at all points within the network. In addition, HP ProCurve Manager Plus (PCM+) software effectively monitored all devices and the network’s status, allowing WCG administrators to configure, update and troubleshoot wired switches centrally and remotely.

The World Cyber Games originally employed an HP ProCurve network at the 2005 Grand Finals in Singapore. Following a decidedly successful event, a three-year deal was negotiated, in which ProCurve provided an Adaptive Network solution for the Grand Finals in Seattle, USA (2007), Cologne, Germany (2008), and the upcoming 2009 Finals in Chengdu, China. ProCurve’s involvement in video game tournaments has not been restricted to the World Cyber Games. ProCurve Adaptive Network solutions have, in recent years, been utilised at similar international gaming events such as the annual Gamers Assembly held in Saint Benoit, France in 2008 and the Campus Party event held in Valencia, Spain 2006.

“ProCurve simply knows what this type of event needs. They have a unique understanding of the gaming networking environment that we have not seen with other networking partners. The onsite expertise provided by its European team ensured that everything was done quickly and efficiently. Working with ProCurve makes my job easy,” says Sang Hong.

For the 2008 Grand Final, ProCurve approached network design from two perspectives. Firstly by facilitating a reliable and secure networking environment to support the stringent requirements of the gaming tournament. Secondly, ProCurve needed to safeguard the internet feed which despite requiring a lower bandwidth, it was essential that it was dependable. With only four days to configure and install the network, Gigahertz GmbH, a local partner, supported ProCurve during implementation and provided onsite management throughout the event.

Through its partnership with HP ProCurve the WCG continues to deliver the premier event in the gaming calendar. Despite the network requirements increasing year on year, the success of the event remains undiminished. ProCurve security features integrated into the network prevent any threats compromising the integrity of the event, mitigating risk to the business and protecting WCG’s reputation as the world’s leading gaming event.

“Fortunately we have a great partner in HP ProCurve that is able to handle any reliability, availability and security issues, so I don’t have to worry. It has been wonderful working with the HP ProCurve team and we are very confident in their networking capabilities and their solutions,” concludes Sang Hong.

Under tight timescales, ProCurve delivered an enterprise-standard Adaptive Network solution to meet the needs of this demanding network environment. With availability key to the tournament’s success, approximately 60Mbps of sustained traffic was shared over the five days of competition, with the network capacity able to switch up to 110 million packets per second. Gaming performance was superb throughout, with average latencies of 3.28 microseconds and the network experiencing zero downtime.

A variety of internal and external threats were detected during the games, however, with the aid of the ProCurve software, integrated virus-throttling and S-Flow technology, all threats were identified, countered and neutralised before they compromised the gaming experience.

“Our biggest needs are reliability, availability and security. Fortunately we have a great partner in HP ProCurve that is able to handle these demands. With more than 700 gamers, referees, as well as members of the worldwide press depending on the network, it is essential that we have an infrastructure that fulfils these requirements. Working with HP ProCurve really makes my job easy. In terms of setting up the network, we’ve got everything perfectly taken care of,” continues Hong.

“Our FIFA Soccer tournament referee reported to me after the tournament: “There were zero network problems. It was perfect.” This is probably the highest compliment possible, as I have to say FIFA and Need For Speed are probably the most network intensive games in our line-up,” confirms Sang Hong.