On World of Warcraft and data requirements.

[theweaselking]

So, I don't play WoW, but I know a lot of you do.

The new patch today, I hear, is 500MB.
Going to 7.5 million subscribers.
For a total of 3.75 PETABYTES of bandwidth consumed.

harald387 and I were saying that that's really not a number we can put a useful meaning to, so I did some math: Assuming standard writable DVDs, that's 800,000 of them. In slim jewel cases, that's about 37 cubic meters - a single container-ship container full nearly to the brim of them. I'm having trouble finding exact cargo volume[1] capacities of 18-wheelers, but I suspect they're close to the same.

So it's as much bandwidth consumed as a TRACTOR TRAILER FULL OF DVDs.

I'm impressed.

(Also: a little less than 1/3 of a C-130 full.)

[1]: Cargo weight? Easy. Cargo volume? Not so much.

Comments

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Cargo volumes aren't fixed because trailer size isn't fixed. Some are nothing more than cargo containers lowered on to a trailer frame and bolted down, others are your bog standard trailer, but length can vary by upwards of twenty feet, and interior cargo space is lessened for refrigerated trailers due to insulation and equipment.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I realise, but I was having trouble even with those.

So, y'know, uninsulated ship cargo containers work just as well.

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

I love Wow.

If you want a free trial just ask.

I'm on the server with benarian and am in a really good casual guild.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

You neglected to factor in the protocol overhead.

I'd say 3.9 petabytes, due to the fact that a lot of those WoW players are playing on Macintoshes (small network buffers) or are behind some sort of crap router that fragments packets.

Yeahp.

Almost rivals daily spam e-mail volume.

Almost.

[buck-x.livejournal.com]

if there was ever a time for blizzard to implement a peer-to-peer downloading system, this would be it.

[dilickjm.livejournal.com]

They did, long ago. WoW has been on a hybrid P2P/DDL patch system for over a year.

Also (luckily) a large portion of this patch has been downloaded over the last couple of weeks. It's still an insane amount of data, though.

[dilickjm.livejournal.com]

OK, not so lucky. It's 492 MB *after* the 200 already d/l'ed. Ouch.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They've already got one. It's similar to bittorrent.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Wait.

You play WoW?

[publius1.livejournal.com]

1) They have P2P already, and it sucks. Ass.

2) I get my patch from Gamespot, as I have a subscription with them and it's MUCH faster.

3) 800,000 DVDs is about right. This is A Major Patch (1.12 to 2.0), and there's about a million accounts, so...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No, but thanks. World of Warcraft not only doesn't interest me, but actively repels me.

[dilickjm.livejournal.com]

Off and on. I'm back into Anarchy Online (hey, it's free and my son wanted to try a MMORPG) for now.

Azjol-Nerub and Proudmoore were my home for a while, though.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Seven and a half million paying subscribers, as of their last information release.

-K"H"S

FYI

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The containers on most trucks and ships are the same. Standard sizes; 20 feet long, 40 and (stored on upper decks only) 45.

Ship capacity is measured in TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent units.

If this info helps, I would be interested in the bandwidth question equated to TEU.

Re: FYI

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

1 TEU, then, since the DVDs will fill a single standard 20ft (39 m3) container.

[gryazi.livejournal.com]

500MB fills one CD.

If teh intarweb was incapable of soaking this load, yet still somehow allowed for MMORPGs to exist, a game publisher would need to deliver one CD per customer.

So what's the volume of 7.5 million slim cases, even divided by about half if you assume wrapped-to-card packaging?

[gryazi.livejournal.com]

Okay, based on this link (http://vcddvdcd.en.alibaba.com/product/50009205/50570317/CD_Cases/5_2mm_Slim_Color_CD_Case__Double_Disc_.html), and assuming any overhead from their carton size is reasonable in terms of the logistics of loading/unloading/delivering products, that's just about 26 "full [20'] container loads," making 26 TEU.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Pretty damn big - but I wasn't looking for "shipping delivery", I was looking for an equivalent to the old statement "the highest transfer bandwidth available is a Volkswagen full of floppy disks"[1].


[1]: Which, for a long time, was true. Now it's a volkswagen full of DVDs. Bandwidth? Massive. Latency? Pretty bad. Ping time? Uh... let's just say you don't want to play Quake this way.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Which brings up the idea of deathmatch played on an RFC-1149 connection.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I've lost several friends to WoW. :-(