NBN Co has released a new video series aimed at gamers called The Ping.
It is part of NBN Co’s strategy to teach Australians how it provides the back-end infrastructure for Australia’s fiber internet. Three episodes were produced in the series, each covering a different topic that would be important to gamers, but I think these episodes are also very valuable to non-gamers.
“We want to ensure that players on the NBN network enjoy a next-level experience. Digital game downloads are expected to dominate game title sales for years to come, so we’re expanding the network to stay ahead of aggregate demand,” said Mark Vanston, general manager of customer experience at NBN Co.
“We achieve this through network investments and upgrades. More than 5.1 million locations across Australia are now eligible to access wholesale tariff speeds from 500Mbps to nearly 1Gbps. For example, at these nearly 1Gbps speeds, a gaming update of around 50GB could be downloaded in minutes instead of hours.”
The first episode The internet explainedgoes into the history of the internet and how it works, from content servers to ISPs to the NBN itself. It also explains how things like ping and “packets” actually work, with some great infographics (along with some renders that are very clearly trying to tear down League of Legends and starcraft 2).
Props to NBN Co for this, by the way, this is really well produced and I think it’s a useful tool for teaching web infrastructure skills to people who may not know that much about the internet.
I’ve played a lot of games with people online over the past 14 years (since I was ten, thanks Runescape) there has always been a bit of confusion as to how servers actually work. Why they get overloaded, connect slowly, or get routed too badly is something that causes quite a bit of head scratching in gaming realms, including me.
Luckily the second video in the series Host in the machine: game server explained addresses this directly and clearly.
the last episode Hardwired to win: How to optimize your router is generally useful for everyone. Routers (commonly referred to as modems, or more precisely modem-routers) can be tricky to use, but this video makes it really easy to understand how to get them working as best as possible.
“Upload speeds are equally important for improving your latency and ping, and checking your internet setup will help reduce factors that could be affecting your speed and performance,” Vanston added.
Not to mow the grass for NBN Co or anything, but we have some pretty sweet tips on how to speed up your NBN plan, too.
Credit where it’s due, these videos rule. If you’re already familiar with the inner workings of the Internet, they probably don’t offer you much value. But if you have friends or family members who are confused about how the internet works, then these videos might be useful to them (especially if they are gamers).
Will this series stop players from complaining about the NBN? You see, probably not, but it’s all interesting, valuable information.
