When Modern Warfare 3 released last year, it pulled in some serious numbers for internet service providers (ISPs). The game’s launch and pre-load period resulted in record traffic across EE and BT, which the companies reported as the “biggest single game contribution to a broadband peak”. But what does this really mean? And how do ISPs cope when gaming traffic spikes occur? I spoke with EE’s director for gaming and future propositional development Sam Kemp to find out.
Inside EE’s network – as with any ISP – are records of games and other media in a cache, or CDN. “CDN is a content distribution node inside our network,” Kemp says. “Whether it’s the latest Apple software release, the latest Fortnite download or the latest Call of Duty game, we work with all of our partners globally to bring all of that content into our network… so when you call down on that film, that game, those maps, it’s already in our network.” This enables ISPs like EE to provide these downloads as fast and as directly as possible, with metrics “we know are really important to gamers”, Kemp says, like “jitter, packet loss, latency, packet sequencing”.
He compares EE’s work adjusting internet signals – specifically when gaming on a smartphone – to a musician tweaking the “fine-tuned dials at the end of a violin or guitar. If you turn them all in the right way, you get the best sound”.
“We can put thousands of pieces of content and games into these caching nodes and [any] of the eight million broadband customers we have can all call down individually on a particular game. There is no complex prioritisation that needs to be done based on a per customer per location part of the UK,” he explains, and no rivalry between content types if a big Netflix show launches the same day as Call of Duty. There is “no prioritisation given across the network”.