 We sent a crew halfway around the globe to Jönköping, Sweden. Why would we do that, you might ask? To take a look at the world's fastest internet connection, a whopping 1.6 terabits per second at DreamHack 2018. To put that kind of speed into context, that is fast enough that everyone in St. John's, Newfoundland could stream high-definition video at the same time and to download PUBG at that full speed would take only 1 16th of a second. They set this up in part to make sure that the over 6,000 people connected to their network have a great gaming experience, but also because of course, Mondo bragging rights. So, let's have a look at the gear and setup involved and give a big shout out to ComHem for sponsoring this video. So, how do you get 1.6 terabits per second? You might think that you'd need a massive honking cable like the size of my face with all of the internet getting crammed through it, but in reality, it's way smaller and way smarter. This tiny yellow cable right here is responsible for the whole shebang. It's just a regular everyday fiber cable, but within it there are eight different wavelengths of light each capable of 200 gigabit per second. When the cable enters the transmission system here, it is split off using a combination of passive, i.e. mirrors and lenses and active signal manipulation to split the different wavelengths apart into more conventional signals. These signals are carried through this larger wire, which contains 16 fibers, and then they are split apart into individual fibers here. From there, the signal undergoes another splitting and is turned into 100 gig purple fibers that then leave the transmission system supplied by the ISP ComHem and go over to DreamHack's routers. In here, the signal is mirrored to allow monitoring, and then it gets sent off to one of the 23 distribution switches around the floor. Now, up until now the signal has been completely fiber, but it has to be turned into a regular old copper connection for the final 20 feet or so. So that happens here. One gigabit is sent to each of the 260 access switches where individual gamers will plug in their computers and receive 100 megabit internet. That is unless they're baller and shelled out for the premium package. In that case, their switch will get a 10 gig uplink and they will get provisioned a full 1 gigabit connection just for them. Finally, those huge PUBG updates can be downloaded quickly. So this is all well and good so far. Fast internet, who wouldn't want that? But where it really gets crazy is in the Department of Redundancy Department. Each distribution switch has two physical connections to the routers, so someone could actually trip over one of the cables without anyone losing their internet connection. At most, they drop a packet or two. And if the DreamHack router that is going to all the switches fails, GG? No. See the two routers on the ends here? They are completely identical. Blow either one of them up and the game shall continue. And it doesn't even stop there. That 1.6 terabit wire, it first travels to a data center in Janseping where it gets split into two 800 gig fibers that separately travel to Stockholm. So if you cut one of those wires, you've got, well, 1.6 terabit because those data centers are also connected together. So you would have to literally blow one of them up to drop this to a piddly 800 gigabit. But of course, all of those things could go wrong or someone could just cut the main cable here. Do it. Do it. I dare you. And even if that happened, just 45 milliseconds later, the routers will have failed over to the four 10 gig fiber cables, which also take two different routes to the main data center in Stockholm, making it basically impossible to fully take the internet away from this LAN party. All right. So now we've got internet into all the switches, but every single one of the routers and switches needs to be configured. And at this scale, manually configurating each switch would take an eternity. And even things you wouldn't normally think about, like running out of IP addresses, become big issues. So to address this, oh, I'm sorry. All of the switches are dynamically configured via an automated deployment system based on DHCP, TFTP, and Python so that it's basically plug-and-play. They're also using a monitoring software called Prometheus, so if a switch goes down, they don't just know that one has stopped working, they also know its physical location in the building, and they're using a front end called Grafana that creates graphs for tracking things like total hours played in each game, what domains are used the most, and the total network usage at any moment. So we figured out how they solve the problem of getting internet to the 6,000 or so percent of the network. 6,000 or so participants. But every computer, monitor, and RGB strip has to be powered as well, and all of those combined draw a massive one megawatt, or one million watts of power. And the fancy stages that showcase the best gamers and musical performances, well, they gobble up another megawatt. So some pretty serious gear has to be deployed to make sure that someone with a 7980XE or a Threadripper doesn't hit Cinebench and make the whole place go dark. So three 10 kilovolt lines come in and get transformed down to 400 volts and about 1,500 amps. Then they enter this room right here, or one of the other nine, just like it. From here, it is split up into 400 volt 400 amp lines that run to the various sub-central distribution centers or 400 volt rails along the ceiling where it gets fed into a box that can handle 63 amps. These power distribution boxes were actually custom made for DreamHack. The older ones can handle two rows of lanters, while the new ones, largely due to computers and especially monitors getting more energy efficient since the event started, can handle three rows. These are also secured with RCD so that if leaking current is detected, let's say someone puts their finger in a socket or spills coke on a power bar, the power is immediately cut to the group, so no one gets hurt and a maximum of only eight computers will go down. But what happens if you aren't fortunate enough to make it to Sweden for the LAN, but you still want to watch the eSports that are all going on at the same time? That's where DreamHack's very smart and also kind of jank, completely custom broadcasting server comes into play. So instead of running a traditional broadcasting server and mixer combination, all of the video and audio streams go into a video hub, a video mixer, and several rendering servers that are behind me right now. And then everything can be switched and configured over the network. This allows for some really cool things like being able to switch inputs from basically anywhere, so that they can be manipulated from the dedicated mixers here or by Raspberry Pi's placed wherever they're needed. There's also an in-game observing team that has access to a delayed feed, allowing them to show important moments from several angles, instant replay style. Since they've built a custom solution using CasperCG, they're able to do other cool integrations using data from the game engine as well, so they can create graphics that show things like player health, what weapon they're using, or the timer on the bomb. These additionally are hooked up to the stage setting, so the lights, screens, and even the pyrotechnics, like for when the bomb goes off, are all automagically synced. So it's been really cool to see all of the custom work that goes into making a massive event like this tick, from the fastest internet connection in the world to smaller things like the ability to easily mute a host, and I hope you guys have enjoyed it. So a huge thanks to you for watching, and a massive shout out to Comhem for allowing us to be here to cover it. So if you guys disliked this video, you can hit that button, but if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff, a 10 dream hack in the future, at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.