(Newswire.net — November 17, 2020) — If you were to ask a gamer what the worst part of gaming is, 9 times out of 10 you’ll be given a one-word response: Lag. It’s the video game enthusiast’s worst nightmare. Lag can completely destroy a user’s experience (both gaming or otherwise) and can potentially render the entire session a waste of time. There are several things that factor into your ability to play high-speed games, but they aren’t all in your control.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are widespread on the internet these days, and if you are hit by one the results can be disastrous. Both smooth and secure gameplay is necessary for ease of mind, so finding the right Anti DDoS protection could make or break your gaming experience.
What is a DDoS Attack?
Before learning about the best ways to protect ourselves from DDoS, we need to understand what it is. Distributed Denial of Service attacks are cyber-attacks with that very goal: to deny your service. An attack involves flooding your server with thousands of junk requests. If enough of these come into a server it loses its capacity to handle real requests. The end result is real users receiving very slow responses or possibly no response at all.
DDoS attacks are abundant on the internet and aren’t leaving the gaming industry anytime soon. According to research from Imperva, the gaming industry accounts for more than a third of all DDoS attacks. There have even been occurrences of DDoS-for-hire services where game players have paid to have their opponent’s matches disrupted. When only one team is able to play a game without waiting full seconds for responses…well, it’s hardly a game at that point.
How to Prevent DDoS Attacks:
The world of cybersecurity is ever-changing, so it’s important that you stay up to date on the best ways to stay safe. Of course, this can be incredibly difficult if you lack time to properly study the field. For this reason, it can be beneficial to find a well-established company that can take care of protection for you.
There are two steps to preventing a DDoS attack. First, you must identify whether a request is legitimate or not, and second choosing a course of action to halt it. There are several tools to help you identify incoming attacks, and the best ways for you to be notified are by keeping a close eye on your logs. If you see a large spike in traffic or ping request time outs, then that’s the first sign you should investigate. Another sign of attempted entry into your system may be if you see a large number of requests coming from the same IP address over time. These are things to keep an eye on as it may be someone probing the security of your system.
Once you have identified that a DDoS attack is on the move, there are also multiple actions you can take to prevent it. Tarpitting is the act of intentionally slowing down incoming connections from an IP. If you see that one IP is constantly hitting your server, you can tarpit it to limit the number of requests it is able to send through.
You can also monitor what actions an infiltrator is taking and adjust your security protocols accordingly. As stated above, cybersecurity is an ever-changing field that at times is adapt-or-perish. Auto-mitigation involves a host filtering out the fake requests while still allowing real users to receive responses. The last thing you want to do is block legitimate requests in an attempt to shut out the bad ones.
Outsourcing your requests to a cloud-based service also offers several advantages. The cloud has more bandwidth and resources than your private hardware so it can handle these requests and give you time to react. Additionally, if you opt to use a cloud-based service then odds are you will gain leverage of their anti-DDoS protection capabilities.
Other Factors:
Of course, there is far more that goes into smooth gameplay than just anti-DDoS protection. You also need to support your gaming server with the proper hardware. If you choose the right dedicated game server, you can scale your resources up and down as your game requires. You want to shop around with a budget in mind, but for the most part, the more you pay the better you’ll play.
Simple things like your server location can also play a significant role. Data cannot travel faster than the speed of light and is slowed down quite a bit by refraction. Over a fiber optic cable, data can travel at a speed of about 1000 miles per 7.5 ms. That’s still crazy fast but considering how massive the world is this could add a second or two to your requests depending on where the game server is located.
Conclusion – Anti DDoS Protection for Gamers:
When it comes to gaming, lag is your worst enemy. It’s an enemy we want to stop at all costs (well, for the right cost actually). DDoS protection is not the cure-all solution for a good gaming experience, but it is imperative to ensure that you are protected from malicious requests that are either meant to wreak havoc on your server or expose your sensitive data.
For ease of mind choose a trusted DDoS company that has experience monitoring and fending off malicious attacks. The sooner you do the sooner you can return your attention to what truly makes your gaming experience great.