Live game streaming (esports), where viewers watch other gamers compete with each other, is said to be one possible application for network slicing. The notion is that creating a network optimized for point-to-multipoint (multicast) content delivery benefits from a network optimized for low latency and high bandwidth.
Of course, there are other ways to support such networks. Traditional live video networks, including those featuring 4K content, have relied on satellite transport to local hubs (cable TV headends) instead of unicast delivery.
It is not so clear that multicast gaming feeds require transport that is materially different from live broadcast (multicast) video, though the intended display screen is PC screen. So the constraint might not be the wide area delivery network itself but the business arrangements around episodic use of the network. Is the content delivered as a consuming-facing “channel” that is programmed “all the time,” or as an episodic event more akin to a podcast, videoconference or other discrete event.
source: Rethink Technology Research
Multicast ABR, for example, is a new multicast format proposed by CableLabs for multicasting video content instead of the more capacity-consumptive unicast method of delivery.
Satellite networks might still work for esports packaged as a live channel. Other WANs might work--especially when edge caching is available, for more episodic events.
Many say 5G will be an enabler for live game streaming, and that is true in some fundamental senses: the 5G network will use a virtualized core network that makes network slicing possible.
It also is true that the 5G core network is designed to support distributed computing, and is therefore also an enabler of edge computing and caching, which might also be an approach for supporting live gaming streams, as content delivery networks have been used to speed up app performance generally.
On the other hand, 5G as an access technology might, or might not, be necessary. A custom VPN is one approach. But satellite delivery to edge locations such as headends also is an option. Multicasting using a network slice also works.
In that scenario, 5G latency performance might contribute to the experience, but it really is the edge computing or the network slicing that contributes most to the low-latency performance.
Also, creating a low-latency, high-bandwidth network for the actual playing of esports games is a different matter than streaming of such matches. The former requires a high-performance unicast network, the latter might, or might not, rely on such a network, as the latter is a multicast operation.
Where most present internet operations are unicast, one-to-one sessions, streaming of video or live esports content is multicast, many-to-many or one-to-many operation.
WAN latency performance is key, though it typically is not so much the WAN performance as the capabilities of the IP networks using the optical WANs, that dictates the limits of experience. Also, large venues are needed for such competitions, so premises networking and high-bandwidth access facilities are a must.
The ability to handle episodic surges in the actual gaming might be an issue for the access connection or the WAN transport. That is an issue either network slicing or raw bandwidth provisioning might support.
The streaming of selected portions of the gaming competitions is a separate matter.
Streaming live esports, in other words, is one networking problem. Supporting an esports tournament is another issue. And streaming such competitions arguably is a third issue. Network slicing is one potential way of handling the streaming. But there are likely going to be other ways, as well.
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