AMERICAS MULTIPLAYER GAMING SOLUTION BRIEF PLAYER-CENTRIC INNOVATION FOR MULTIPLAYER GAMING
Multiplayer Gaming, Social Gatherings for Gamers Video-game-related crime is almost as old as the industry itself. But while illegal copies and pirated versions of games were the previous dominant form of illicit activities related to games, recent developments and trends in online gaming platforms have created new possibilities for cybercriminals to swindle huge amounts of money from an industry that is worth nearly $100 billion. Ben Dickson, Techcrunch 1 23 of the top 25 gaming companies 2 work with Akamai to deliver some of the world s most popular games. This requires constant innovation to come up with new ways to solve the big networking and security challenges that cause friction for players. In an Akamai conducted survey, results show that nearly half of the players indicated they would avoid engaging with an online storefront due to concerns over security issues. DEFEND YOUR PLAYERS AND THE GAMES THEY LOVE As industry popularity increases, so does the potential for attacks. Gaming companies that are targeted can face extremely costly consequences in terms of lost revenue, business continuity, and brand reputation. In the recent past, there have been numerous high-profile Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against well-known gaming companies, some that resulted in an out of service alert that disappointed and frustrated gamers for several days. 7/10 23% 1/2 PLAYERS SAY LAG AND DISCONNECTS ARE THE TOP REASONS FOR DISENGAGEMENT 3 WILL QUIT GAMES BECAUSE OF LAG AND WILL NEVER COME BACK 4 AVOID CERTAIN GAMES BECAUSE OF SECURITY CONCERNS 5
Attacks can peak at 600 to 700 Gbps and beyond, a size that can easily shut down entire data centers. 6 In a growing number of cases, the DDoS attacks are used as a distraction, allowing hackers to undertake further security breaches: According to a recent survey, more than half of DDoS-attacked companies experienced theft of data, funds, or intellectual property. 7 DDoS attacks have grown massively in frequency and scale, making them particularly difficult to defend against. Such attacks can peak at 600 to 700 Gbps 7 and beyond, a size that can easily shut down entire data centers and is virtually impossible for even the largest of organizations to handle on their own. The cost of these assaults is staggering as well. They include not only the significant IT resources required to fight the attack itself, but also customer support and call center costs, loss of sales revenue during downtime, and the damage to customer confidence and brand credibility as frustrated gamers flood support channels and vent loudly on social media. MUST-HAVE CAPABILITIES FOR MULTIPLAYER GAMING Delivering multiplayer games comes with a myriad challenges, some of which can be difficult to manage. Bad experiences = a loss in players and revenue. There are many decisions to make, but Akamai has identified the three infrastructure must-haves when providing secure multiplayer gaming: MUST-HAVE CAPABILITIES FOR MULTIPLAYER GAMING Reliable Performance & Global Reach Expert Services and Support Dependable Security
Global Traffic Management provides high site availability and responsiveness for online players. AKAMAI, THE TRUSTED PARTNER FOR CREATING FLAWLESS MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCES 1. Reliable Performance & Global Reach To ensure high performance and availability, developers and publishers balance traffic across numerous data centers and geographically dispersed infrastructures, as well as those based in the cloud. Traditional hardware-based solutions lack the scalability that can affect a user s ability to connect to an appropriate data center, while cloud-based solutions may prove challenging while integrating with your physical infrastructures. Global Traffic Management (GTM), built on Akamai s Cloud Delivery Platform, is a DNS-based load-balancing solution that balances traffic across all data sources both cloud based and on premise With Akamai, we saw a higher level of satisfaction among existing users as well as a huge influx of new users, both of which contributed to our success in North America, Europe, and Oceania. Kim Min-Seong, Country Manager, Kakao Games infrastructures. It provides you a highly scalable, fault-tolerant, load-balancing solution that ensures high performance and availability under any peak demands. 60% Traffic 100% Traffic (i.e. failover to DC1) Akamai Edge Data Center (Region 1) Akamai Edge Data Center (Region 1) End User End User DC 2 goes down 40% Traffic Data Center (Region 2) Data Center (Region 2)
You invest passion in creating your games. We re passionate about seamlessly delivering them to your players. Benefits of Akamai s GTM include: Reduced infrastructure costs and complexity. Using a cloud-based solution for server load balancing reduces costs and maintenance headaches, while ensuring high scalability. Failover to ensure business continuity. GTM is fault tolerant and ensures business continuity by directing web content requests to an alternate origin location when there is a failure at the primary origin location. This can be configured across disparate network carriers, cloud providers, or on-premise infrastructure environments. Traffic management with simple rules. Flexibility to balance traffic across your data centers by geography or IP based rules, and by preset percentage splits. Balance traffic across any data centers on premise and cloud based. GTM balances traffic across all your data centers empowering you to select the right combination of on premise and cloud based data centers to ensure high performance and availability. IP Application Accelerator (IPA) accelerates IPbased applications to users worldwide, to enable developers and publishers to reach globally distributed players quickly, securely, and reliably without the expense of building out and supporting Internet dedicated IT infrastructure. It is a managed service that delivers high availability and consistent online response times worldwide. IPA can support real-time multiplayer and single-player connected gameplay, along with services like matchmaking, leaderboard updates, authentication, and in-game chat. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform, the IPA service leverages technologies that improve delivery of TCP/IP applications by overcoming the real-time latency, packet loss, and transport inefficiencies of the public Internet. Origin Application Optimized Akamai Path + Sure Route + TCP Optimization + Packet Explication End User Akamai Edge
Features within Akamai s IPA include: Real-time route optimization identifies the optimal path (fastest and most reliable) over the Internet for your players to reach the origin network infrastructure. Akamai s high-performance transport protocol reduces the number of round trips required while increasing end-to-end throughout. Protection from infrastructure attacks. IPA maintains data integrity by delivering encapsulated traffic and provides built-in security features to protect your infrastructure from attacks. This includes blocking application access to specific IP addresses and regions. Packet loss reduction techniques can improve IP application performance further, particularly in times of peak demand and congestion. A solid infrastructure that reduces friction is imperative to the delivery of unique and unforgettable games. Nothing short of a compelling gaming experience that transcends expectation will do for your players. 2. Dependable Security Don t Let Hackers Reign Fast DNS is a cloud-based DNS solution that provides 24/7 DNS availability, improves DNS responsiveness, and has the resilience to defend against the largest DDoS attacks. Built on a globally distributed Anycast network, it can be implemented as a primary or secondary DNS service, replacing or augmenting existing DNS infrastructure as needed. Users connect to the closest DNS server in the world for improved availability and response End User Akamai Edge Fast DNS routes users to websites and applications deployed in private datacenters or public clouds Origin Application FastDNS can be deployed as your primary or secondary authoritative DNS to replace or scale out existing infrastructure Manually manage your FastDNS configuration through the Luna Control Center or automate with Akamai {OPEN} APIs
Prolexic Routed stops DDoS attacks in the cloud, well before they reach the data center. A constantly growing number of security threats makes protecting your games and your relationships with your players a primary audience concern that can massively impact your revenue. Don t let your players down. Prolexic Routed provides organizations with a simple and effective way to protect all web- and IP-based applications in their data center from the threat of DDoS attacks. Offered as a flexible and comprehensive service, Prolexic Routed stops DDoS attacks in the cloud, well before they reach the data center. It provides comprehensive protection against the broadest range of DDoS attack types and defends against today s high-bandwidth, sustained web attacks, as well as the increasing threat of potentially crippling DDoS attacks that target specific applications and services. Broad DDoS attack protection: Provides organizations with dynamic protection against a broad range of potential DDoS attack types, regardless of complexity, and even as they change over the course of an attack. This includes both network-layer DDoS attacks, such as UDP and SYN floods, as well as application-layer DDoS attacks, such as HTTP GET and POST floods. DDoS attack support: Fully managed security service to help organizations respond to the threat of DDoS attacks. Akamai personnel perform real-time analysis of ongoing attacks and provide the ability to adapt to changing attack vectors and multidimensional threats. 24/7 Security Operations Center: Akamai s 24/7 SOC provides global coverage for organizations around the world, with more than 150 SOC staff operating across five SOC locations. In addition to detecting and mitigating developing attacks, Akamai communicates and coordinates with organizations onsite staff and troubleshoots any abnormalities. Flexible deployment options: Offered both as an Always On service, which offers the fastest detection and mitigation capabilities, or optionally as an On Demand service, to provide organizations with flexibility in how they customize and apply DDoS mitigation. Prolexic Portal: A dashboard providing realtime visibility into network traffic even as DDoS attacks are unfolding, with hundreds of metrics to help organizations understand the makeup of any DDoS attack. DDoS monitoring (optional): Network- and application-based traffic monitoring services provide early warning of potential attacks, allowing the SOC staff to respond to DDoS attacks in even less time.
3. Expert Services and Support Be Game-Ready with Akamai Finally, it s critical to surround your operation with the right team of dedicated experts to help plan, monitor, and support your service from the ground up. Akamai s Services and Support Solutions team acts as an extension of your own. Our globally distributed media experts provide trusted advice and assistance from initial deployment through to ongoing support, maintenance, monitoring, and management. With a dedicated, round-the-clock point of contact, you can minimize the impact of time-sensitive issues. To learn more about our Multiplayer Gaming Solution, go to Akamai.com/gaming SOURCES 1) https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/08/the-gaming-industry-can-become-the-next-big-target-of-cybercrime/ 2,6,7) 2017 Akamai 3,4,5) Akamai.com As the world s largest and most trusted cloud delivery platform, Akamai makes it easier for its customers to provide the best and most secure digital experiences on any device, anytime, anywhere. Akamai s massively distributed platform is unparalleled in scale with over 200,000 servers across 130 countries, giving customers superior performance and threat protection. Akamai s portfolio of web and mobile performance, cloud security, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions are supported by exceptional customer service and 24/7 monitoring. To learn why the top financial institutions, e-commerce leaders, media & entertainment providers, and government organizations trust Akamai please visit www.akamai.com, blogs.akamai.com, or @Akamai on Twitter. You can find our global contact information at www.akamai.com/locations. Published 07/17.