Steam’s CDN uses HTTP to distribute downloads(1), so you could route Steam-related HTTP traffic through a caching proxy if you wanted to relieve your transit/peering links.

That does nothing for the parts of the network that are actually under bandwidth pressure though (i.e. the last mile or, in our case as an FWA provider, the RAN).

SteamPipe - Valve Developer Community

Dermot Williams

Head of Core Engineering

Imagine Network Services Ltd.

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+dermot.williams=imaginegroup.ie@nanog.org> on behalf of Josh Luthman <josh@imaginenetworksllc.com>
Date: Friday, 22 November 2024 at 14:26
To: Mehmet <mehmet@akcin.net>
Cc: nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Small / Rural ISP owners

This email originated outside of the organisation - please exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links.

Rural has nothing to do with it. It's 100% about the network and internet service delivery.

We are a small rural ISP doing gigabit fiber and I personally live in a city with a coax/fiber/FWA options. Gaming works just fine on any of them.

I don't believe there are any cache boxes for games, I haven't seen anything along those lines but bandwidth is pretty cheap for us - it's getting it to peoples houses that's the expense.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 8:33 AM Mehmet <mehmet@akcin.net> wrote:

Are there a lot of gamers in rural areas? Do the rural ISPs have challenges with reaching gaming servers. I do not know if gaming or caching or both a challenge for rural isps due to being distant from population centers and possibly caches

Mehmet

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 08:32 Josh Luthman <josh@imaginenetworksllc.com> wrote:

Might want to say why.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 6:50 AM Mehmet <mehmet@akcin.net> wrote:

Hello - i am looking for small ISP owners, Rural ISPs in FL, TX, NY, VA, CA (but anywhere in the world is fine).

If anyone lurking on the list please contact me offlist

Mehmet
+1-424-298-1903