Meta Connectivity from SMOAD
In 1992, Neal Stephenson coined the term Metaverse, which referred to a digital world that would exist parallel with the current real world. It has now become a word to describe the 3D version of the Internet or digital space wherein businesses and people can collaborate, communicate and work across numerous devices. In the 70s and 80s speculating about the benefits of the Internet felt very much the same as the talk about Metaverse in recent times. Today, most of us are acquainted with smartphones and digital avatars navigating through virtual space. VR Headsets, smart glasses, or AR glasses are recent inventions that make gaming and socializing much more enjoyable. While the efficiency of Metaverse is a topic of debate, tech giants like Google, Facebook (a) Meta, Apple, and Microsoft have already started working towards making it a reality.
Although the real benefits of Metaverse can be reaped only in the near future, many massive companies have started developing good entertainment and communication apps; we should explore these technologies and evolve with them. There were days when physical face-to-face team meetings and scrum meetings were mandatory, but today communication apps like Zoom & Teams have made virtual meetings a reality. Even online shopping has evolved over the years; businesses have started working on integrating Virtual assistants, bots, and AR apps to enhance customer experience. We are trying a product virtually before buying was just a concept before but is now becoming a reality.
Metaverse in Gaming and The Challenges Faced
There are numerous simulation and shooting games that use 3D avatars of the players to represent them in the virtual world. This virtual space brings together hundreds of players from different locations to a single space where they enjoy the freedom to play, eat, shop, shower, and sleep, just as they would in real life.
While companies are working towards improvising their apps and their utility, latency and network bandwidth capacity still pose a significant threat to these apps’ operating efficiency. To have an uninterrupted experience, the network has to work effectively and with the lowest possible latency. Latency can disrupt the gaming experience – Imagine your avatar reacting a few seconds after your command to shoot a zombie! SD-WAN and Edge Computing can lower this Metaverse latency and help users enjoy the experience without interruptions.
How Can SD-WAN Improve Experience in Metaverse?
SD-WAN is a virtual WAN that helps combine various transport services like LTE, MPLS, and broadband to securely and effectively connect users to applications. It connects enterprise networks over substantial geographical distances, and this virtual WAN architecture increases the performance of applications, improves user experience, and cuts down IT costs. This is precisely what The Metaverse environment requires!
A Wi-Fi connection would be more than enough for a zoom meeting, but for more demanding rich media applications that are a part of Metaverse, regular Wi-Fi wouldn’t suffice. As mentioned earlier, Virtual reality and light fields will require more bandwidth, and you cannot afford to deal with latency – it would frustrate you halfway through the game. Facebook (a) Meta has openly stated that their metaverse applications depend on 5G networks since most of their users would be using phones. Establishing Service reliability might seem complicated, but with 5G network incorporation and efficient Virtual WAN infrastructure (SD-WAN), all network concerns can be removed.
Metaverse is rapidly evolving, and in a few years, a large portion of the population will be involved in Metaverse in some way or the other. It may look like a vague obsession to a few, but Metaverse could become a parallel world to consider with the appropriate equipment and networking options.
SMOAD for next-generation technology
SMOAD (Software Defined Mobile Aggregated Data) is the next-generation SD-WAN-based solution. It aggregates bandwidth across mobile uplinks as a network overlay with control functions. SMOAD provides redundancy support, higher bandwidth, and smoother traffic flow.
SMOAD can run multiple Virtual Machines at the edge level already. It gives SMOAD an advantage in performing various functions on the device itself. Also, the technology used for aggregation of wireless/wired connections is Network Agnostic. So, when 5G comes in, SMOAD devices can take advantage of it right from Day 1.
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