AT&T will continue Blizzard hosting
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 4th 2009 at 3:00PM
We haven't gotten much of a look at Blizzard's server architecture, but here's a tiny one: AT&T has announced in a press release that they're re-signing to a two year agreement to provide Blizzard with hosting for World of Warcraft and Battle.net. We'll get the joke out of the way first: that explains why Blizzard's sites go down so often! Ba-dump ching!But seriously, the press release says AT&T has been working with Blizzard on providing bandwidth and network monitoring for nine years already, and that they have multiple "Internet Data Centers" that provide global support of the network infrastructure that lets your character wander around Azeroth. AT&T isn't the only company Blizzard works with -- while their network provides the connections and bandwidth, the actual coding and the databases behind all of the action in WoW are another story, and Blizzard likely works with multiple big companies to make sure that all runs smoothly. AT&T provides the cables, but someone's got to help provide the servers and the code they're hooked up to.
Still, despite the jokes about the downtime, it's quite a feat. We're still interested in hearing more about the mechanics behind the World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, lots of this information is probably a trade secret at this point -- even if no other MMOs are coming close to WoW's numbers, Blizzard has probably come up with a lot of techniques they don't exactly want known to the public. But a look inside one of these "IDCs" or an idea of just what machines they're using to run a realm of WoW would be intriguing.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
bundee Mar 4th 2009 3:09PM
Considering all the complaints from WOTLK, I'd say this is a pretty stupid move in terms of customer satisfaction. Of course, customer satisfaction is no. 14 on Blizzard's Things to Accomplish list, but meh....
Omestes Mar 4th 2009 3:31PM
What stupid move? That they are continuing their current hosting instead of spending god-knows-how-much on changing the current scheme?
All-in-all AT&T has been doing a pretty good job. Most of the realms, excluding maintenance and such, still have around a 99% uptime, which is pretty damn good. And before WoLK the performance was even more solid. If the nine years is true, Blizz and AT&T have been in bed for some time before WoW, and thus the solid performance of b.net must also be factored in.
The connectivity issues right now are probably all Blizz's fault. Soft-problems mostly, like bad architecture, or at least some scalability problems. Regardless, the problems are in the code, not the tubes.
Psy Mar 4th 2009 4:37PM
Can't be that stupid of a move if people continue to play World of Warcraft, can it? If several million people play World of Warcraft then the server hosting can't be that bad can it?
uncaringbear Mar 4th 2009 6:32PM
I don't see how the hosting services have been that poor for Blizz in the last few years. They might not hit the 00.09% uptime standard, but considering the scale of the infrastructure and the the demanding end user expectations, they could do a lot worse.
Also, it would be an absolute nightmare and a huge expense to change hosting providers at this stage. The logistics would be huge.
nick Mar 4th 2009 3:40PM
wouldnt the code be TCP/IP?
cause yeah thats what the internet is built on
Ryan A Mar 4th 2009 3:54PM
No.
Check this piece out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP
Cedrich Mar 4th 2009 3:22PM
Before I picked up WoW I played Eve-Online, another MMO that's a lot different from WoW really... CCP, the company behind Eve, were always very open about the tech behind the Eve servers. The network guys were usually pretty happy to discuss the topic with us fellow server-geeks over the forums, and they even had several Dev-blogs outlining the server architecture they used and how they planned to improve it for the future.
I'd love to find out the kind of hardware running a single WoW realm...
Firestride Mar 4th 2009 3:24PM
I continue to suspect that Blizzard's database capabilities are more valuable to the company than anything else. I'm willing to bet we're just starting to hear about how their servers revolutionized the internet.
Joe Mar 4th 2009 4:22PM
I wouldn't go that far.
Blizzard uses Oracle for the database backend. There is no doubt that they have database and Oracle geniuses working at Blizzard.
However, Blizzard has simply evolved and matured over the years as far as their infrastructure is concerned.
If you follow Blizzard news closely and read between the lines you'll find that Blizzard often throws more hardware at the issue to overcome performance issues.
The ones that revolutionize the internet are the ones that do more with less. The ones that optimize their infrastructure backed to use less CPU cycles and less hardware. I don't think Blizzard falls into this category.
jfofla Mar 4th 2009 3:34PM
If Blizzard really wanted to take in the money they would become an ISP and guarantee players the best possible connection to the game.
Joe Mar 4th 2009 4:22PM
AT&T is smart move for only one reason; they are a Tier 1 provider.
However, AT&T has the most antiquated infrastructure in their industry. It's simply due to them being such an old company. AT&T is one of the slowest to upgrade and improve their infrastructure. They are also famous for charging way above average for their services.
I think we would see a performance increase if Blizzard switched to Verizon for their backbone connections. Verizon's enterprise internet connections are basically UUNET. UUNET invented the internet. Verizon acquired this infrastructure from MCI when MCI folded.
You're connections are only as good as your peering relationships. Verizon/UUNET has some of best peering agreements in the industry. They also happen to own more fibre than anyone else which means they don't have to hand off the data to other networks as often.
Joe Mar 4th 2009 4:35PM
Just to clarify, obviously internet evolved out of ARPANET. UUNET is responsible for helping build the various internet exchange points that evolved into the internet we use today.
Randy Mar 4th 2009 5:49PM
LIES!!! AL GORE INVENTED THE INTERNET!! Oh that stupid Al Gore....I must give him my fave line from the Oxhorn Series.....Al Gore.....ROFLROFL PWNT NEWBS IM UBER UBER 1337
Gallatin Mar 4th 2009 5:36PM
I am *very* surprised to see that Blizzard has a single-vendor relationship for their WOW game server Internet bandwidth. This is very much not the norm for any mission-critical Internet application service, even ones at 1:10 or 1:100 the scale of WOW. For a variety of business and functional reasons you would always want to have at least two upstream backbone ISPs providing your Internet access.
In fact, a service the size of WOW really should have transit with *all* the big Tier1 providers to provide the best user experience. Going with a single provider (especially AT&T) will leave you in a position of having sub-optimal performance to certain portions of the Internet (Such as... Comcast) that are not well connected or under-capacity at the point they connect to your single upstream provider. And if that provider has a systemic problem such as a major fiber cut or technical fubar, you have literally no backup path.
Given this is so fundamental, it makes me wonder what factors override using the industry standard approach. I just can't see Blizzard's network engineers making the statement- "Yeah... let's go all in with the Death Star. We don't need a backup plan!"
PopeJamal Mar 4th 2009 5:03PM
To demonstrate your point, my WoW latency went directly into the toilet as soon as my cable company was "acquired" by Comcast. That was true for multiple servers in different data centers/regions as well.
FooMasta Mar 4th 2009 5:06PM
You suggestion may be right in that that will lead to the best user experience, but at what cost? Everyone needs to realize that this is not cheap. They *could* have the best of hardware, a surplus of bandwidth, with back up routes, but the end user may end up paying $25/month or even more for our WoW. And at that price-point, I am betting a lot of people will unsubscribe.
Gallatin Mar 4th 2009 5:36PM
The biggest Internet expense Blizz will have is by orders of magnitude is bandwidth *usage*. Usage costs divide over multiple providers rather than multiply. So yes, incremental Internet costs might increase somewhat for the base connection charges, but they won't double.
"Saving" these costs is akin to driving without insurance- you save money until something goes wrong.
Sneaky Mar 5th 2009 5:14AM
Well,
In relation to a previous poster. I created my first toon on a US server and leaving in an Oceanic region that was quiet silly of me, much lag like 500ms permanently. I then paid for a transfer to an Oceanic server: wow! That went down to 250ms and that was amazing (even though we all know it's crap, I used to play quake with at 30ms ).
Then WotLK came out, I'm now back to something close to 400ms and still Tuesday night are no play because of the US timed weekly maintenance.
Diversifying bandwidth provider would have probably helped my issue what should I do now paid them $25 to copy a dozen lines across databases to change server again, to drop to a mre reasonable 250ms?
I honestly envy Europeans their network infrastructure is so much better.
Sneaky
Keith Mar 4th 2009 4:52PM
WoW's uptime is abysmal. I wasn't expecting five-nines, because that's prohibitively expensive, but two nines would have been nice. Christ knows what they're doing with their 8-hours-a-fortnight, but I don't know any other paid-for internet service that has 2% planned downtime.
Not that this is AT&Ts fault, of course. Jus' sayin'.
Rob Mar 4th 2009 5:26PM
Agreed, no other business allows this sort of downtime. But, you know, whatever, its a game, not mission critical. Can always read a book or watch tv during downtime.