The pre-launch of 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 6' and Amazon's NFL stream led to record Internet traffic for the week of October 21. 'To me, it's an affirmation of the path we're on,' says Comcast's chief network officer, Elad Nafshi.
Comcast said the pre-launch of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6," Amazon's stream of the Thursday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams on October 24, and the drop of a sizable multi-player patch helped to drive record Internet traffic for the week of October 21.
The Call of Duty game drop and Amazon NFL game accounted for about 26% of total network traffic that week, Comcast said. That data usage level was about 14% higher than a similar weekly occurrence in 2022 that involved a massive game download event paired with Amazon's NFL coverage, the company added.
Comcast said the Call of Duty pre-launch alone accounted for 19% of total network traffic, calling it the fifth-highest Internet traffic event in Comcast's history. Peacock's exclusive stream of the AFC Wildcard game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs in January 2024, which consumed 30% of Internet traffic, is still number one.
The new Call of Duty download was a doozy. According to The Verge, file sizes ranged from 84.4 gigabytes for the PlayStation version up to 102GB for the PC edition, and potentially rose to around 300GB if consumers opted to download other related content packs.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 downloads were also fueled by the fact that the release was tied into the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Speaking on Microsoft's fiscal Q2 2024 earnings call this week, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said Black Ops 6 was the biggest Call of Duty release ever, helping to set a record for Game Pass subscribers on launch day.
Working at the network core and edge
That Comcast's network handled the spike and similar peak usage events with relative ease is a testament to its architecture, which now ties in open caching (with the help of Qwilt) at the edge of the network along with a move towards a virtualized core network via its "Janus" initiative, said Comcast Chief Network Officer Elad Nafshi. Comcast also attributed its ability to handle the load in part to its use of an AI-assisted platform that improves the overall performance of the access network.
"To me, it's an affirmation of the path we're on," Nafshi said. "You don't just scale up to an event like that without being thoughtful about what your architecture is, what the investment is. This is taxing on the core network. This is taxing on the access network. All of that truly comes together."
Comcast doesn't share trends about network data consumption on a regular basis, but this week the company said its broadband-only customers are averaging about 700GB a month. OpenVault's Q2 2024 Broadband Insights Report found that 18.2% of all broadband subscribers are "power users" that consume 1 terabyte or more per month. Monthly average data consumed by broadband subs in the quarter was 585.8GB, up 9.7% versus the year-ago period, according to OpenVault.
Comcast is also applying more focus on low-latency connections and has been field testing that capability for more than a year with partners such as Apple, Nvidia and Valve. The company told Light Reading it remains on track for a commercial rollout before the end of 2024 but declined to say how the capability will be introduced and marketed to broadband customers.
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