Cybersmart plans game servers, improved ADSL for gaming

Cybersmart aims to improve its ADSL service for gaming purposes, along with implementing plans to host local servers in 2013.

“The biggest impact on a gamer is latency. If you have IPC in a single region as we currently do, then this impacts gamers severely as everything goes via our IPC in Cape Town,” said Cybersmart.

Cybersmart discussed the issue of Johannesburg gamers having to deal with double latency to due to connections travelling from JHB to Cape Town and back.

“We are in the process of splitting our network (this should be completed this month) into 3 regions, Durban, JHB, Cape Town. This will minimize latency that our customers experience.”

Cybersmart explained that its current unshaped service is “unfriendly” to gamers, as priority gets split between gaming, torrents and downloads; and has said that a new friendlier service is on the way.

“Gamers actually want to prioritize their gaming traffic over everything else and we will be launching a service that does exactly that,” said Cybersmart. “Ironically, in the true sense of the definition, this is shaping – because other traffic gets shaped down to prioritize gaming – but in this instance the shaping will benefit the gamer.”

Cybersmart also expressed interest in hosting its own gaming server, although there are obstacles to overcome.

“Hosting a gaming server requires specialized administration skills which we do not have in house,” explained Cybersmart. “We are aiming at putting an offer to the gaming community to assist us in hosting one or more gaming servers.”