October 20, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The online gaming market's explosive growth presents hosts with a lucrative market opportunity. But because of the unique requirements involved in hosting online games, it also brings a set of challenges not always found in mainstream hosting.
The need for a host that could appreciate these needs recently led online gaming operator and graphics card vendor BFG Technologies (bfgtech.com) to move its dedicated game servers to Insomnia365 (insomnia365.com), a division of Texas-based Web hosting provider The Planet Internet Services (theplanet.com) that specializes in game server hosting.
BFG began to look for another host because its previous provider was not giving it the flexibility it needed, explains Michael Grey, technical marketing assistant for BFG. "Most game server hosts out there literally sell you a game server by the instance," he says, "[but] you don't have any access to the server beyond basic control panel and FTP."
At the recommendation of an industry friend, Grey got in touch with The Planet and talked to Sassan Dibadj, product manager of Insomnia365, about his hosting needs. He found quickly that Insomnia365 was a very good fit, specifically because it could give his company the flexibility and control it needed, Grey says. Insomnia365 provides BFG with the dedicated boxes, but let the company decide what to put on them.
"You have complete control over everything," says Grey. "Control is extremely important, and that's one of the things that Insomnia365 offers that I don't know of any other host that can offer you."
Making this flexibility possible is Insomnia's proprietary game server control panel Cortex, a sort of "cPanel for game servers" which enables users to customize settings for whatever games they are running through an extremely straightforward and user-friendly interface, says Dibadj. Cortex comes with a full menu of functionality and caters to gaming server needs, defaulting to settings that are recommended by the gaming community.
Having control also ensures that the host doesn't overload boxes by running too many instances - a problem with many gaming hosts, Grey says. "They have full control on how many game servers they run and that lets them manage the load on the servers so that their end users get a good gaming experience," says Dibadj.
With ping times and overall network performance being of critical importance to gamers, the quality of Insomnia365's network was another key consideration. Insomnia365 works off The Planet's tier-1 network, which runs out of three data centers (owned and operated by the Planet) and is supported by approximately 10 upstream providers. The uptime gives gamers the consistency they need.
"Whether you are east coast or west coast you get a good ping time here in Dallas," says Dibadj, "Since you get a pretty average ping time anywhere in the US to us, it works quite well for gaming because you don't want the east coast players complaining that the west coast players have lower ping times."
Going with a host that understands the special needs of gaming and was able to provide knowledgeable and responsive support was another key selling point, says Grey. And this is especially applicable when it comes to hosting game servers.
"Gaming servers in general are much more support-intensive than Web hosting in general, a lot of your overhead and time can be eaten up by supporting those servers," says Dibadj. There are multiple games produced by different vendors offering unequal levels of support and patches for the various games have to be tracked and applied. The gaming community is also extremely demanding. Ping time, for example, is not as critical to a Web host so long as the page comes up, but a gamer might call up and complain if ping times are slightly less than optimal, says Dibadj.
BFG's move to Insomnia365 illustrates how sensitive Web hosts must be to the needs of gamers in order to win their business. They demand such a level of attention and focus that The Planet found it necessary to develop technology and create a subsidiary solely committed to the needs of this market.
