NETSCOUT Case Studies Global Gaming Company Leverages NETSCOUT’s PFS Technology to Secure and Monitor Gamers’ On‑Line Experience

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	Global Gaming Company Leverages NETSCOUT’s PFS Technology to Secure and Monitor Gamers’ On‑Line Experience NETSCOUT

Global Gaming Company Leverages NETSCOUT’s PFS Technology to Secure and Monitor Gamers’ On‑Line Experience

NETSCOUT

Technology Category	Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries	Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions	Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases	Traffic Monitoring
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	The gaming company has experienced an increase in business during the current pandemic crisis, on top of their natural growth. Some of their data centers generate tens of millions of packets per second that need to be monitored by generating NetFlow data, and forwarding it to multiple security tools, as well as the custom network and application performance tools that have been developed in house. Current monitoring solutions did not provide complete visibility into all traffic. Appliances with much higher traffic capacity than the existing solution were required for NetFlow generation. High-volume participation in multi-player games can draw millions of unique customers. They also have intensive live support from their IT team on the customer facing network, so the packet broker solution needed to scale for many simultaneous staff users as well as with the different data center locations experiencing different growth rates on the customer side. Read More
About Customer	This publicly held entertainment company operates a gaming platform that serves many millions of online players around the world. The company focuses on developing and delivering the newest, most-popular, high-quality graphics games, including some renowned multi-player games that have fans all over the world. With data centers in a half-dozen cities around the globe, this company has been offering their customers a top-tier gaming platform, focused on the player’s experience, for many years. Read More
Solution	By deploying multiple nGenius PFXs and tapping and spanning at the appropriate places in the data centers, the entire multiterabit flow of traffic in each direction can be copied to the monitoring network. Then Packet Flow eXtender software (PFXs) can generate the NetFlow data which the IT staff and tools at the company were already expert at interpreting. The gaming company deployed multiple units of PFX which generate NetFlow data from over 50 million packets per second of traffic from a single data center. The PFS switches used load balancing to share the traffic load with multiple security tools, enabling these tools to be used to capacity and cost-effectively, but never oversubscribed. The PFSs also used a function called “Session Aware loadbalancing” to keep all packets flowing in each direction of a single user’s session together. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security

Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing

Use Cases

Traffic Monitoring

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

The gaming company has experienced an increase in business during the current pandemic crisis, on top of their natural growth. Some of their data centers generate tens of millions of packets per second that need to be monitored by generating NetFlow data, and forwarding it to multiple security tools, as well as the custom network and application performance tools that have been developed in house. Current monitoring solutions did not provide complete visibility into all traffic. Appliances with much higher traffic capacity than the existing solution were required for NetFlow generation. High-volume participation in multi-player games can draw millions of unique customers. They also have intensive live support from their IT team on the customer facing network, so the packet broker solution needed to scale for many simultaneous staff users as well as with the different data center locations experiencing different growth rates on the customer side.

About Customer

This publicly held entertainment company operates a gaming platform that serves many millions of online players around the world. The company focuses on developing and delivering the newest, most-popular, high-quality graphics games, including some renowned multi-player games that have fans all over the world. With data centers in a half-dozen cities around the globe, this company has been offering their customers a top-tier gaming platform, focused on the player’s experience, for many years.

Solution

By deploying multiple nGenius PFXs and tapping and spanning at the appropriate places in the data centers, the entire multiterabit flow of traffic in each direction can be copied to the monitoring network. Then Packet Flow eXtender software (PFXs) can generate the NetFlow data which the IT staff and tools at the company were already expert at interpreting. The gaming company deployed multiple units of PFX which generate NetFlow data from over 50 million packets per second of traffic from a single data center. The PFS switches used load balancing to share the traffic load with multiple security tools, enabling these tools to be used to capacity and cost-effectively, but never oversubscribed. The PFSs also used a function called “Session Aware loadbalancing” to keep all packets flowing in each direction of a single user’s session together.

Impact #1	Achieved access to all data center traffic during a period of fast growth
Impact #2	Distributed traffic to the existing security and monitoring tools to ensure applications are continuously available
Impact #3	Reduced business risk and protected revenue-generating services by generating customer-preferred NetFlow metrics for multiple security tools

Impact #1

Achieved access to all data center traffic during a period of fast growth

Impact #2

Distributed traffic to the existing security and monitoring tools to ensure applications are continuously available

Impact #3

Reduced business risk and protected revenue-generating services by generating customer-preferred NetFlow metrics for multiple security tools

Benefit #1	NetFlow data from over 50 million packets per second of traffic from a single data center
Benefit #2	Ready for the move to 100 GbE in the future

Benefit #1

NetFlow data from over 50 million packets per second of traffic from a single data center

Benefit #2

Ready for the move to 100 GbE in the future

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Overview

Global Gaming Company Leverages NETSCOUT’s PFS Technology to Secure and Monitor Gamers’ On‑Line Experience

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit