The moment I walked into DreamHack is something that I will always remember. I have been to events in the past where a lot of gamers and geeks find themselves in the same place, but never something of this magnitude. I was overwhelmed to see thousands of people from all over the world together in one place for one purpose: video games. In recent years the culture of video games has evolved from a minority of people sitting behind screens in dimly lit rooms to part of modern culture. The rise of eSports speaks to this greatly; some competitions such as Blizzard's Heroes of the Dorm are gaining enough popularity to be hosted on mainstream television channels like ESPN3.
As I was walking through the event I came upon the Asus exhibition space. I noticed how much they are promoting their Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand of hardware and thought to myself 'what about this branding works so well?' Many gamers (including myself) choose to use these Republic of Gamers parts, but why? It dawned on me that the brand represents two things: being the best of the best and being part of a community. This really hit home and made the reasons Procera attends the event far more significant to me.
Every year Procera attends DreamHack to lead in the setup of the event network. Ensuring that a network supporting approximately 10,000 gamers at the same time is up and running for the event is no easy task. However the real importance of our presence goes beyond just the setup. Our equipment is used to help shape the network traffic and protect it from intrusions such as DDoS attacks that may affect the experience of gamers. To these 10,000 gamers, having a flawless network connection is critical. Problems leading to poor Quality of Experience (QoE) such as high latency will destroy any chances of having fun and accomplishing a goal shared by gamers worldwide: to win. Network quality in tournament play is especially critical as no one wants to lose because their competitor’s click was registered before theirs due to lag. Seeing all of the participants at the event so involved in watching and participating shows how gaming is extremely important to them. The community they hold very close to their hearts and the goal to be the best is as possible because of modern networks. Because of this we work as hard as we can to make sure their experience is the best it can be!
The concept of providing the best network experience can be extracted and applied to Procera's goal across all networks: to provide the best Subscriber Experience. We understand how important Subscriber QoE is whether users are gaming, streaming video, sharing files or just browsing the web and we want to enable the best possible experience. This is why we have launched several initiatives such as ScoreCard and Video Perspectives to help operators truly understand their subscribers and provide them with the tools to create the best subscriber experience.
The Internet is becoming extremely important to everyone around the world, connecting people in ways never before possible and providing new challenges to overcome. Whether that is chatting with relatives thousands of miles away or getting in the last click that leads to a tournament victory, we all want the best of the best. I, for one, am extremely honored to be a part of making sure that happens.
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Alex Thiessen
Hi my name is Alex Thiessen. I'm a Marketing Coordinator for Procera Networks. Procera Networks comes to DreamHack every year for a couple of reasons. First we really, really value the subscriber experience. We come somewhere where there's a lot of gamers, to an event that's very important to the gaming community to make sure that they have the best experience possible. The second reason is there are a lot of very talented and network savvy people here. Procera does a lot of recruiting at DreamHack. We try and find talented people, who are interested in the same things we are, interested in bettering the subscriber experience, and see if they'd be a good fit for our company.
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Robin Johansson
I'm Robin. I'm the Team Leader for the Network Team at Dreamhack. Procera comes to Dreamhack to enhance the subscriber experience to make sure that there is no latency in the gaming, and protect the network against the attacks from the outside, which would affect the experience badly.
No one likes latency in their gaming, or being affected by an attack that would decrease the performance of the network, and therefore it causes a bad experience to the game. Network management is important at the gaming events to make sure that everybody gets the proper experience.
Tags:
DreamHack, Maximizing QoE, Subscriber Experience, QoE