St. Mary’s University develops a state-of-the-art esports arena with dedicated connectivity

“The level of support we get from Spectrum Enterprise and their commitment to our success is incredible.”—Joseph Longo, executive director of infrastructure and enterprise systems, St. Mary’s University

Competitive online gaming, or esports, is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, and it’s fueled by the next generation of students. St. Mary’s University set out to invest in students’ rising interest by creating a varsity esports program. But a critical decision needed to be made: Who would provide the digital infrastructure for the esports arena?

Their existing campus network had enough throughput and bandwidth to support online gaming. However, because that network serves the entire campus, esports traffic would be competing for priority with all other campus traffic, which would degrade the gaming experience. For the esports program to be successful, it needed a dedicated internet circuit separate from the campus network. The school turned to Spectrum Enterprise. 

A partner with more than the right technology

St. Mary’s had partnered with Spectrum Enterprise in 2019 to launch SpectrumU, a video streaming service for college students, and it was a huge success for the university. But the school was impressed with more than just the streaming solution. “The level of support we get from Spectrum Enterprise and their commitment to our success is incredible,” says Joseph Longo, executive director of infrastructure and enterprise systems.

It was decided that connectivity for the arena would be provided by a 2 Gbps Spectrum Enterprise dedicated Fiber Internet Access circuit. This would offer the school more than enough capacity to support competitions and livestreaming while ensuring that bandwidth could be easily scaled up if needed.

The FIA installation was completed on schedule just six weeks after the start of the project, and the arena was ready to host up to 30 gamers for the inaugural esports season. 
No matter how fast the esports program might grow, St. Mary’s is ready to support it with a reliable, high-performance network that’s ready for anything.