Last night at 3:00 AM, the battle group suddenly exploded. "The server is stuck in PPT again!" "Someone is maliciously DDoSing, right? I can't even connect!" I looked at the screen full of complaints, poured a mouthful of coffee, copied the keyboard and began to check the logs - sure enough, it was a traffic-type attack, the peak soared to 300Gbps, the ordinary CDN nodes were directly pierced. This kind of scene, who has not experienced a few times in the game industry? But every time I encountered, or blood pressure pull full.
The game industry and ordinary websites are not the same, high latency 50ms players can curse the street, server downtime ten minutes community directly on the inflammation. Not to mention those hackers who specialize in picking popular games, several gigabytes of garbage traffic per second rushing over, can not prevent the service waiting to stop and lose money. I've seen too many teams use ordinary cloud vendors' "free protection" for cheap, only to realize that the bandwidth isn't even enough when they're really hit.
Why can't ordinary CDNs carry game attacks? First, the caching mechanism is simply not the right way. Game data are real-time interaction, dynamic requests accounted for more than 90%, CDN cache a lonely; second, cleaning capacity false standard. Many vendors write a "T-level protection" is actually a shared cluster, a hit the whole region together with the card; third, the node quality varies. Overseas go a bypass link, latency directly soared to 200ms +, players think you are using satellite Internet.
A truly professional gaming high defense CDN has to meet three hard indicators at the same time:ultra-low latency、Precision Cleaning、Edge Computing Support. Latency must be controlled within 30ms, cleaning should be able to recognize game protocol features (such as UE4 engine handshake packets), and also support edge logic operations to handle part of the game logic. These days, even CDNs have to be "teammate-proof" - some attacks are even peer-bought blackmail services.
After testing a dozen service providers on the market, I picked three really can play to say. First of all, purely self-funded test without advertising, some vendors send me a test account I refused, just figure an objective.
CDN5's global game acceleration routesIt's the most stable I've used this year. They specifically do the game protocol optimization, TCP acceleration algorithm is a bit of a thing, the Asian node delay is basically pressed within 20ms. Anti-D ability to carry the actual test over 480Gbps mixed attacks, the key is not to lose packets. Configuration example is actually not complicated:
Don't forget to put the game subdomain CNAME in DNS resolution to the protected domain they provide, traffic goes through the cleaning center first and then back to the source. I recommend turning on their "Intelligent Protocol Analysis" feature, which automatically recognizes the traffic characteristics of Unity and Unreal engines, and has a much lower false positive rate than traditional rulebases.
CDN07's Anycast Gaming NetworkIt is especially suitable for overseas distribution projects. They use BGP Anycast to broadcast the same IP to more than 60 nodes around the world, and players automatically connect to the nearest node. The biggest advantage is that the attack traffic is diluted at the nearest node, and it won't be as easy to penetrate as single-point protection. However, it is important to note that their TCP acceleration needs to be turned on at a separate cost, and the default configuration is only optimized for UDP.
During the test, I deliberately chose the evening peak hour to run Speedtest, and the latency of the link from Tokyo to Los Angeles can actually be suppressed at about 110ms, while the general line is generally more than 180ms. Defense strategy is very aggressive, directly on the suspected attack IP link layer interception, tested 700Gbps SYN Flood no fluctuations. But there is a small pit: their console API flow restriction is very strict, remember to re-test the mechanism when deploying automation.
Domestic niche but good08HostIt's a good idea to have an independent game team," he said. The price is only half of the big manufacturers, but the defense can really carry 300Gbps. I have dismantled their traffic cleaning logic, actually using FPGA chips to do rule matching, faster than software cleaning 3 times delay. The disadvantage is that the number of nodes is small, only domestic and Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States users have to find another program.
Remember to turn on their 'Game Shield' mode when configuring, this is a core feature:
Don't believe the false propaganda of "unlimited protection". Last year, a vendor bragged about 1Tbps protection, but the result was that we tested 400Gbps and penetrated it, and the reply to the work order was actually "We recommend upgrading to the customized version of the enterprise". Now I see this kind of slogan directly close the page.
Real-world defense effects are to be seenCleaning precision和Return flow rate ratio. Some vendors direct all the attack traffic to the cleaning center, but still miss a lot of garbage packets when returning to the source. My common test method is: use hping3 to simulate 100,000pps of ACK Flood, while running iperf3 to measure normal traffic latency. Good CDN should make iperf3 latency fluctuations less than 5%, poor together with card death.
There's one more little detail:surveillance panelYou must be able to see the type of attack in real time. Once I encountered a reflection amplification attack, a vendor's console only showed "traffic anomaly", and I relied on my own packet capture to realize that it was an NTP reflection. Later, I switched to a vendor that can display attack vectors, and at a glance I could see that "60% is reflected from Memcached" - this kind of information is what O&M wants.
If the budget is limited, it is recommended to use a hybrid program: static resources to throw cheap CDN, game core communication to go high defense line. But pay attention to the domain name decentralization strategy, don't let attackers find the real business IP. once a team put the official website and game API under the same domain name, the result is that the official website was knocked down and even dragged down the game login - the CDN can't take the blame.
Finally, a tyrannical theory: the high defense CDN thing.Better a redundancy than a fluke.I've seen too many teams think "we're small and no one can beat us". I've seen too many teams think, "Our game is small, no one can beat us," and then get beaten up and cry on the day of launch. Nowadays, blackmailers have monitoring scripts that automatically scan for new game launches, so if you don't have the right protection in place, you're just sending people's heads off. It's ten times cheaper to do stress tests in advance and simulate business performance under 200Gbps traffic impact than to remedy the situation after the fact.
Real Case: Last year, a secondary game used a combination of programs - CDN5 to deal with Asian traffic, CDN07 to cover Europe and the United States, 08Host to do the backup line. On the line encountered a week-long DDoS, the highest hit to 800Gbps, but the players did not perceive. The person in charge of operation and maintenance later told me that the extra money spent is nothing compared to the loss of service suspension.
In the final analysis, the choice of game high defense CDN is like buying insurance - usually feel a waste of money, when things go wrong is a life-saving straw. Key indicators to see the hard power: delay data to third-party testing (such as PingTools to measure the global nodes), the defense ability to see the actual pressure test report, do not believe the official website marketing rhetoric. Remember, the CDN that allows you to sleep at ease is a good CDN.
