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By Philbert Shih, theWHIR.com
May 4, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Online gaming companies are looking to content delivery network operators for help with their growing bandwidth requirements and fast-growing bases of users.
Arizona-based Limelight Networks (limelightnetworks.com) announced on Monday that it had been selected by Xbox Live, the online gaming service for Microsoft's (microsoft.com) Xbox video game system, to provide developers and gamers with access to games, content and downloads over its globally distributed network.
Prior to contracting Limelight, Microsoft had been hosting and delivering content for Xbox Live in-house. But with a highly anticipated release of specialized content for its wildly popular Halo 2 game expected to generate extremely high volumes of traffic, Microsoft felt it was necessary to outsource to a service provider that could ensure the content was delivered to Xbox Live's premium subscribers without a hitch.
"They felt there was … a need to find a CDN provider to help them with their expanded network requirements," says Michael Sawyer, vice president of marketing at Limelight Networks. "Microsoft was concerned … that there would be sufficient network and delivery overhead to cover the geographically dispersed requests for this, which is why they wanted to get a CDN online. They wanted to ensure that all the people that would download it, would have an excellent experience."
Xbox Live has a steadily growing base of 1.4 million subscribers, many of whom are avid gamers, hungry for continually updated content. And the Halo 2 game carries content that is both dynamic and extremely bandwidth-heavy. These formidable requirements made scalability a key concern.
"The Limelight Networks platform has demonstrated it can support the needs of Xbox Live subscribers today, and can scale with Xbox Live as we continue our rapid growth," Eric Neustadter, operations manager for Xbox Live, said in a release.
Another reason Microsoft came on board was Limelight's ability to handle an IP-based device (as opposed to a PC-based one), which has different requirements and has certain ways of interacting with the network, explains Sawyer.
Sawyer says one of the main reasons Microsoft picked Limelight was because of the quality of its network performance, which has capabilities upwards of 100 gigabits per second. Being able to meet a short timeline was another important selling point. "They needed a provider that could deliver that capacity as scheduled and not have to build out to hit that capacity," says Sawyer.
Limelight's network has 10 major distribution points that enable it to reach efficiencies in terms of handoffs with both its commercial and direct to network peering partners, says Sawyer. A dynamically adapting system manages content requests numbering in the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
Although Limelight's network is based in the US and Europe, it is able to reach users in places as far away as Asia through its aggressive peering strategy. Limelight, says the company’s chief network architect Nathan Raciborski, peers with both foreign and non-domestic networks. And the full-route commercial providers it peers with, such as Global Crossing, France Telecom, AT&T and AOL, are known for their great international performance.
"We've picked our networks to perform into those international markets where others struggle," says Raciborski. And with the gaming market picking up around the world, especially in Asia, Limelight plans to expand into the Far East sometime before the end of the year.
Companies that host large quantities of bandwidth-intensive content depend on near-perfect performance. In case something goes wrong, they need a backup plan in place so that their services can continue uninterrupted. To this end, many companies use a multi-vendor strategy for content delivery, leaving a certain percentage of their traffic with an alternate provider to protect against unforeseen complications.Sawyer says Microsoft's exclusive outsourcing of CDN services to Limelight does not present itself as a liability since it is in effect, a kind of second source strategy. Microsoft has its own in-house capabilities in place. But whereas others have outsourced to two CDN vendors, Microsoft uses Limelight as a kind of secondary provider, although in this case, Limelight is also Microsoft’s largest distribution source.
"Limelight has tended to focus on what we call high-bandwidth media … entertainment media downloads that are reaching the broadband consumer," says Sawyer. "It's really a validation for what we've been doing for quite some time."
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