Ascend Global Sales Accelerator: Application Notes

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British Telco Offers Fast-Action PC Gaming

Background

Games playing is a popular pastime in the United Kingdom, where tens of thousands of players regularly engage in fierce electronic combat through games with names such as Descent, Doom, and Virtual Pool.

To capitalize on this growing market, a British telephone company has developed a revolutionary interactive games network that lets gamers find on-line opponents all over the country and play the latest PC computer games in leagues and competitions. Without ever leaving their homes, gamers can compete head-to-head or in teams of up to 10 players.

The new games network requires a PC and a modem with a minimum of 9.6 Kbps throughput, a CD ROM with a multiplayer game and a special software package provided by the telephone company. It connects players with each other over regular phone lines, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Players use the network on a pay-as-you-play basis at the rate of £1.50 ($2.20 US) per hour, with no subscription charge.

Application

A fast-action games service that allows multiple players to play PC computer games over phone lines

Previous Approach

Games-playing is available on the Internet, where you typically pay Internet access, phone and game playing charges

The Need

A gaming alternative that provides faster game play than Internet-based services, at a lower price

PC Gaming Previous Method

The Solution

To support its new service and woo gamers away from competing services on the Internet, the telephone company needed a network infrastructure that would consistently deliver fast game play to a large number of users. Equipment in the network had to provide low latency, in order to eliminate noticeable delays between players' moves and jerky movements in fast-action games. Equipment also had to be reliable, scalable and easy to manage.

How it Works

The telephone company chose Ascend's powerful MAX 4000 WAN access switch to play a pivotal role in the new games service -- providing modem-based gamers dial-in access to the network. The MAX 4000 was selected for its superior performance, scalability and remote management capabilities.

Today, 10 MAXs are collocated with other network equipment in one of the telephone company's unmanned service centers. Each MAX contains 60 digital modems and supports two ISDN PRI. When a player dials the games network's phone number, his call terminates on a digital modem in a MAX (the MAX can contain up to 72 digital modems). The digital modem converts the player's analog signal into a digital signal, and then forwards it through its Ethernet port at 10 Mbps to an Ethernet switch. From there, it travels onto a 100-Mbps FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) LAN consisting of UNIX-based servers running customized games-playing software. The software serves to schedule games, rank players by skill level in leagues and ladders, and moderate players' moves when a game is in progress.

The low latency of the MAX contributes directly to the fast game play, allowing a player's keystroke to travel at lightening-fast speeds from the digital modem port on one side of the unit, out the Ethernet port, on the other side. In fact, it takes a keystroke just 50 milliseconds to traverse the entire network -- from a player's keyboard, to the UNIX server managing the game, and then onto an opponent's screen.

Other important features of the MAX include standards-based support for SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and remote management capabilities. Using the SNMP MIB in each MAX, operations staff can configure and troubleshoot the remote units from a centralized location, managing them along with other devices in the network under a single SNMP management platform.

As ISDN access to the games network becomes available, the MAXs also can be upgraded transparently to support ISDN. By replacing existing digital modem cards with digital interface cards, each MAX can be configured to handle a combination of up to 120 ISDN and analog calls or ISDN calls, alone.

The telephone company expects the new gaming service to be a big success. The network can scale to support this growth surge simply by adding more MAXs.

Ascend Equipment

MAX 4000s with digital modems provide network access to modem-based PC games players

The Benefits

Low latency enhances games network performance

High-density platform supports 60 simultaneous gamers, per MAX

Remote management allows devices located in unmanned service center to be managed from a central location

Easily upgradable to ISDN

Interactive Games Network - Ascend Solution