Nerf N-Strike Elite Battle App Tactical Rail Mount Accessory

Pros Fun, easy way to record Nerf wars from a first-person perspective.

Cons Only works with iPhone or iPod Touch. Nerf Mission App is fairly useless. Bottom Line Hasbro heard you like Nerf, so it put a camera on your gun so you can shoot while you shoot!

By Will Greenwald

A few months ago, I devised a Nerf killcam using a Looxcie HD mount and an iron sights attachment from my Nerf Longstrike. It was effective, but basically cobbled-together and expensive. A $200 action camera and an attachment for a $40 Nerf gun make for a pricey toy add-on. Fortunately, Hasbro has released its own official answer to my high-definition killcam: the Nerf N-Strike Elite Battle App Tactical Rail Mount Accessory. It's a clip-on holder for your iPhone or iPod Touch that turns it into a digital scope and camera with a free app. At $14.99 (list) it's a fun little accessory if you like Nerf toys and you have an iOS device, but as an Android smartphone user I feel left out.

The Mount
The rail mount is the same dark blue plastic found on most Nerf N-Strike Elite guns, with gray accents, a white stripe, and an orange lever for the iPhone enclosure. The enclosure  is a two-part clamshell case for the iPhone (4th, 5th, or 6th gen) or iPod Touch (4th or 5th gen), with rubber mounted on the insides to cushion the device. The mount comes with a smaller gray plastic sleeve that fits inside the enclosure so you can use your iPhone 4/4S or fourth-generation iPod Touch (the mount fits the iPhone 5 and 5th-gen iPod Touch without the sleeve). The orange lever flips up and closes securely to fasten the two sections together, and the rubber is molded to ensure your device won't shake or fall out of the enclosure when it's closed. There are no holes for the 30-pin or Lightning connector, or any of the side buttons, only a cut-out for the front Home button and a cut-out for the camera lens on the back. The mount clips onto any Nerf accessory rail, and leaves enough room to open the enclosure completely to insert or remove your device without taking it off your gun.

The App
You can use your standard iOS camera function in video mode as a killcam, but Hasbro intends for the mount to work with its free Nerf Mission App. The app integrates a camera function that can record 5-, 10-, or 15-second clips or bursts of 1, 3, or 5 photos into a sci-fi-themed interface that turns the screen into a digital scope when not recording. The app also includes a guide to hand symbols for Nerf warfare, and has rules for a few games like Capture the Flag and Base Defense. These are all minor features that aren't particularly useful or fun. The big plastic bezel on the mount and tiny icons on the app make it difficult to navigate with the iPhone or iPod Touch, so unless you really like the sci-fi-themed digital scope you should probably just use the iPhone's Camera app.

The Video
While the camera position in the mount is slightly to the left of the barrel, the lens is wide enough and angled just right that you can't really notice that it's offset; the picture looks just like your view would be from the top of the mounted gun. The mount is too high to get the barrel in frame, even for larger rifles like the Rapidstrike, but you can get a good view of darts flying when you shoot. As you can see, I shot some videos of Nerf guns in action through the mount, and it worked very well.

At $15, the Nerf N-Strike Elite Battle App Tactical Rail Mount Accessory is an affordable accessory to your Nerf arsenal if you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch. For an office-warfare camera, it's a fantastic toy. And it's simpler and sturdier than my own homegrown killcam, and it lets you shoot people while you shoot them. 

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Imagination to battle ARM with MIPS server chips

Imagination Technologies, the UK company that designs the graphics chips for the iPhone and iPad, will release a new CPU design next year for low-power servers, the company's CEO said this week.

It's part of a broad push by Imagination to expand the use of MIPS chips in all kinds of products, including servers, tablets, smartphones and wearable computers. Imagination inherited the architecture when it bought financially struggling MIPS Technologies last year.

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"The intent with MIPS is to cover all the markets where a CPU is relevant," said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination's CEO, at a press event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

It's a new and bold effort by Imagination, which is best known for the PowerVR graphics chips used in many top-tier mobile devices, including Google Glass. It hopes to expand the MIPS business in areas where the architecture is already strong, such as networking and home media systems, and also to plow new ground.

That will mean increased competition with Imagination's UK rival ARM Holdings. ARM is the dominant designer of CPUs for smartphones and tablets, and it's also targeting the server market, so the moves by Imagination could set up a grand battle between the two companies over the next few years. ARM, meanwhile, is also going for a bigger slice of Imagination's graphics business.

In servers, both companies are targeting low-power "hyperscale" servers, used by companies such as Facebook and Google to run massive online workloads. They will both have to compete with incumbent Intel, which has stepped up its own efforts to build low-power chips.

ARM and Imagination both develop chip designs that they license to other companies to manufacture. They each offer architectural licenses, which let companies design their own chips from scratch, and licenses for complete core designs, which can be turned into finished products more quickly.

Companies such as Broadcom and Cavium already build MIPS chips for specialized network equipment using an architectural license. But to promote MIPS more broadly, Imagination will offer complete core designs for servers as well.

Asked to give a timeframe, Yassaie said Imagination's upcoming Series5 "Warrior" CPUs will cover every segment of the market -- including servers -- by the end of 2014. It will take a further two to three years for chip makers to create finished server products and get them to market, Yassaie said.

"So for us to be a significant player in [servers] it will take several years. But in terms of technology, come the end of next year I would expect to have a solution for all the markets that are important for a CPU to be in," he said.

Imagination had already made clear that it would use the MIPS acquisition to build CPUs for the tablet and smartphone markets. Yassaie's comments Wednesday show the company is serious about servers as well.

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Apple faces threat from China, bellwether in battle against Android

Computerworld - Apple faces a threat from an unexpected quarter: Chinese developers crafting Android apps, an analytics firm said today.

Chinese developers build nearly two-thirds of the mobile apps used by Chinese consumers -- an even higher percentage than U.S. developers contribute to U.S. consumers' app usage patterns -- illustrating not only the difficulty outsiders face in breaking into the massive market, but reinforcing one analyst's claim that Apple will face a crisis next year if it continues to shed smartphone share.

According to Flurry, a U.S.-based mobile analytics firm, U.S. developers are losing their grip on the mobile app ecosystem, and have accounted for just 36% of all smartphone and tablet apps published so far this year. That's down from 45% over the last two years.

The U.S.'s contribution to the overall app market -- Android and iOS -- looked better when Flurry weighted the data by time spent with apps: There, U.S. developers accounted for 70%. But that, too, was smaller than in years prior, when U.S. programmers held app usage shares of 75% and 76% in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

While Flurry's data was meant to push U.S. developers to think globally -- something they've not done nearly as successfully as those in other countries -- it also revealed an interesting trend in China.

China, said Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, is not a big software exporter at the moment. But that will change.

"The software export market [for China] is nascent now, it doesn't look like a big software exporter yet," said Khalaf in an interview. "But Chinese developers are starting to see some adoption in Japan and Korea. That's their focus now: CJK [China, Japan and Korea]."

And Chinese apps, localized for export, will continue to grab global share by expanding into other neighboring markets, including Southeast Asia, India and Indonesia. "The sheer numbers in India ... that's a lot of market [for Chinese apps]," said Khalaf.

The Chinese maneuver may seem inconsequential to Apple at first glance, but Khalaf begged to differ.

That's because Chinese consumers are more likely to be using an Android-based smartphone, one tied to the Android ecosystem, than they are to own an iPhone and rely on Apple's app market. In earlier studies by Flurry, the firm pegged the Android-iOS split in China at about 2 to 1, with Apple's installed base accounting for just 35% of the country's total. The remaining was all Android.

And Chinese developers, like all developers, follow the money. If Android dominates the installed base, Android is what developers will write for.

"When you look at the apps being submitted to Flurry, you do see an interesting shift happening, with Chinese developers releasing Android and iOS apps at the same time," said Khalaf. "But an 'Android-first' release could be the next shift down the road."

And that's where things start to get ugly for Apple. Or so Benedict Evans, an analyst with U.K.-based Enders Analysis, has argued.

In a report published in early August, Evans maintained that without a low-priced iPhone in its portfolio -- and by low, he meant as low as $200 to $300 -- Apple risked losing mind share among developers. In other words, Apple needs market share as much as profit margin for the iPhone to continue being a credible smartphone brand.

Like Khalaf, Evans saw the danger stemming from developers' decisions.

"Developers are starting to move from creating new products on the basis 'iPhone, then maybe Android' to 'iPhone and then Android' or even 'iPhone and Android at the same time,'" Evans said in his report. "We do not see Android becoming a first choice this year, but it is no longer optional for any publisher seeking real reach. If total Android engagement moves decisively above iOS, the fact that iOS will remain big will be beside the point -- it will move from first to first-equal and then perhaps second place on the roadmap."

If that happens, Apple is in a world of hurt.

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Imagination to battle ARM with MIPS server chips

IDG News Service - Imagination Technologies, the UK company that designs the graphics chips for the iPhone and iPad, will release a new CPU design next year for low-power servers, the company's CEO said this week.

It's part of a broad push by Imagination to expand the use of MIPS chips in all kinds of products, including servers, tablets, smartphones and wearable computers. Imagination inherited the architecture when it bought financially struggling MIPS Technologies last year.

"The intent with MIPS is to cover all the markets where a CPU is relevant," said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination's CEO, at a press event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

It's a new and bold effort by Imagination, which is best known for the PowerVR graphics chips used in many top-tier mobile devices, including Google Glass. It hopes to expand the MIPS business in areas where the architecture is already strong, such as networking and home media systems, and also to plow new ground.

That will mean increased competition with Imagination's UK rival ARM Holdings. ARM is the dominant designer of CPUs for smartphones and tablets, and it's also targeting the server market, so the moves by Imagination could set up a grand battle between the two companies over the next few years. ARM, meanwhile, is also going for a bigger slice of Imagination's graphics business.

In servers, both companies are targeting low-power "hyperscale" servers, used by companies such as Facebook and Google to run massive online workloads. They will both have to compete with incumbent Intel, which has stepped up its own efforts to build low-power chips.

ARM and Imagination both develop chip designs that they license to other companies to manufacture. They each offer architectural licenses, which let companies design their own chips from scratch, and licenses for complete core designs, which can be turned into finished products more quickly.

Companies such as Broadcom and Cavium already build MIPS chips for specialized network equipment using an architectural license. But to promote MIPS more broadly, Imagination will offer complete core designs for servers as well.

Asked to give a timeframe, Yassaie said Imagination's upcoming Series5 "Warrior" CPUs will cover every segment of the market -- including servers -- by the end of 2014. It will take a further two to three years for chip makers to create finished server products and get them to market, Yassaie said.

"So for us to be a significant player in [servers] it will take several years. But in terms of technology, come the end of next year I would expect to have a solution for all the markets that are important for a CPU to be in," he said.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Imagination to battle ARM with MIPS server chips

Imagination Technologies, the U.K. company that designs the graphics chips for the iPhone and iPad, will release a new CPU design next year for low-power servers, the company’s CEO said this week.

It’s part of a broad push by Imagination to expand the use of MIPS chips in all kinds of products, including servers, tablets, smartphones. and wearable computers. Imagination inherited the architecture when it bought financially struggling MIPS Technologies last year.

“The intent with MIPS is to cover all the markets where a CPU is relevant,” said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination’s CEO (shown above), at a press event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

It’s a new and bold effort by Imagination, which is best known for the PowerVR graphics chips used in many top-tier mobile devices, including Google Glass. It hopes to expand the MIPS business in areas where the architecture is already strong, such as networking and home media systems, and also to plow new ground.

That will mean increased competition with Imagination’s UK rival ARM Holdings. ARM is the dominant designer of CPUs for smartphones and tablets, and it’s also targeting the server market, so the moves by Imagination could set up a grand battle between the two companies over the next few years. ARM, meanwhile, is also going for a bigger slice of Imagination’s graphics business.

In servers, both companies are targeting low-power “hyperscale” servers, used by companies such as Facebook and Google to run massive online workloads. They will both have to compete with incumbent Intel, which has stepped up its own efforts to build low-power chips.

ARM and Imagination both develop chip designs that they license to other companies to manufacture. They each offer architectural licenses, which let companies design their own chips from scratch, and licenses for complete core designs, which can be turned into finished products more quickly.

Companies such as Broadcom and Cavium already build MIPS chips for specialized network equipment using an architectural license. But to promote MIPS more broadly, Imagination will offer complete core designs for servers as well.

Asked to give a timeframe, Yassaie said Imagination’s upcoming Series5 “Warrior” CPUs will cover every segment of the market—including servers—by the end of 2014. It will take a further two to three years for chip makers to create finished server products and get them to market, Yassaie said.

“So for us to be a significant player in [servers] it will take several years. But in terms of technology, come the end of next year I would expect to have a solution for all the markets that are important for a CPU to be in,” he said.

Imagination had already made clear that it would use the MIPS acquisition to build CPUs for the tablet and smartphone markets. Yassaie’s comments Wednesday show the company is serious about servers as well.

There’s nothing about ARM that makes it intrinsically more suitable for servers than MIPS, said Paul Teich, senior analyst with Moor Insights and Strategy. Both are based on RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architectures that lend themselves to low-power designs.

The “magic” in ARM server chips from the likes of Calxeda doesn’t come from the core itself but from the surrounding technologies, Teich said. Nor should software be a hurdle for MIPS, he said, since there are already MIPS versions of Linux, and it would be relatively easy to port other programs to the architecture.

Gartner analyst Mark Hung agreed that “from a technical standpoint,” MIPS can be competitive with ARM in servers.

But ARM has a head start. Calxeda and Applied Micro have already developed ARM server chips that customers are testing.

If the new MIPS cores don’t appear until the end of next year, Imagination will be “on the tail end of being late,” Teich said.

Yassaie acknowledged there’s work to be done in both servers and smartphones. Initially, he expects to grow the MIPS business in markets where it’s already prevalent, such as networking and home media equipment. Mobile may be the hardest market for Imagination to crack, he said, presumably because of ARM’s dominance.

But the industry is ready for another CPU design company, according to Yassaie. Vendors don’t want to be beholden to a single supplier, and he’s quick to label ARM a “monopoly” for its dominance in mobile devices.

Several years ago, the PC was “the only ecosystem that existed,” he said. “But now there are several ecosystems, with some pretty big players behind them, and it’s completely untenable to expect those people to put up with such control.”

There’s also renewed confidence in MIPS now that it’s owned by a stable company, according to Yassaie. “People were worried about MIPS’s future, there was a cloud over its head, and now that’s gone away.”

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Dell profit slides 72 percent as privatization battle drags on

Dell reported a 72 percent drop in profit on Thursday, a month before an expected shareholder vote that could shape the future of the company.

Dell is in the midst of a battle between founder and CEO Michael Dell, who wants to take Dell private, and a group of discontented shareholders who say he must pay more money in order to do so.

Michael Dell and his investment partner increased their offer slightly last month, to about $24.7 billion, and on Sept. 12 Dell’s shareholders are due to vote on whether to accept the proposal. The opponents, led by investor Carl Icahn, still want more money, and it’s unclear if the privatization plan will go through.

In the meantime, Dell is fighting to improve its financial performance against the backdrop of a declining PC market, a lackluster economy and uncertainty about its future.

On Thursday it reported revenue for its second quarter, ended Aug. 2, of $14.5 billion, about level with the same quarter last year. Net income declined 72 percent to $204 million.

Sales in its PC business fell 5 percent to $9.1 billion, Dell said. But operating profits from that group declined more steeply, by 71 percent, as Dell cut prices to win business and grow its market share.

“Our efforts to improve growth have improved our share position at the expense of profitability,” CFO Brian Gladden said in a letter to investors.

Results were better in its Enterprise Solutions Group, which sells servers, storage and network gear, where revenue was up 8 percent to $3.3 billion, Dell said. Services revenue was also up slightly, to $2.1 billion.

Using nonstandard accounting methods, which excludes certain costs and charges, Dell reported a profit of $433 million for the quarter, or 25 cents per share. On that basis, profits were in line with analysts’ expectations, according to Thomson Reuters.

Dell’s expenses in the quarter also included $125 million related to the privatization effort, the integration of acquisitions and layoffs, the company said.

Dell released the results a few days ahead of schedule, because of the “heightened interest in the company,” spokesman David Frink said. It opted to forgo the usual conference call with financial analysts, publishing instead a letter from its CFO and other materials.

Michael Dell announced his plan to take Dell private back in February. He’s trying to grow the data center side of Dell’s business, which is more profitable than the PC side, and says he can do it more effectively if Dell is private, away from the scrutiny of Wall Street.

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Wi-Fi adapter shootout: Qualcomm versus Intel in an 802.11 battle

Gamers are always hunting for a competitive edge, and the folks at Bigfoot Networks—now a part of Qualcomm Atheros—have long promised to deliver network interface cards that perform better with online games and other latency-sensitive applications. To demonstrate its prowess in this area, the company sent me two identical Alienware notebooks, one equipped with Qualcomm’s Killer Wireless-N 1202 and the other with Intel’s Centrino Advanced-N 6230.

Robert CardinWe benchmarked two otherwise identical Alienware laptops: one outfitted with a Killer Wireless-N 1202 NIC (left) and the other with Intel's Centrino Advanced-N 6230 (right).

Both NICs are dual-band adapters that can connect to an 802.11n router on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency band. Both also support two spatial streams for a maximum physical link rate of 300 megabits per second. Some gaming-laptop manufacturers, including Alienware, offer Killer NICs as standard equipment, while others offer the adapters as added-cost upgrades. You can also purchase one of these cards by itself and upgrade your existing notebook, provided that the system has an available Mini PCIe slot to host the card (a common feature on better notebooks). The Killer Wireless-N 1202 is certainly inexpensive enough: I’ve seen it selling online for as little as $35 (Intel’s card is street-priced at about $30).

The key selling point of Killer NIC technology is its ability to identify the types of traffic traveling over your network and to assign higher priority to latency-sensitive traffic, such as online games, HD video, and audio.

Latency is a measure of time delay. When applications such as online games and streaming media encounter too much latency, you’ll end up with visible and/or audible glitches and hiccups. If you’re playing a first-person shooter with an online opponent, latency can render you a frustratingly easy target.

To evaluate each card’s ability to combat network latency, Qualcomm provided me with its Gaming Network Efficiency (GaNE) benchmark to measure ping (the time required for a packet to make a round trip on the network) and jitter (undesirable deviations in signal timing). Qualcomm offered to allow us to examine the program’s source code to ensure that there were no shenanigans.

GaNE measures real-time performance from two wireless clients at once, recording the results on a third computer that’s hardwired to the network. This way, both client adapters are subject to the same environmental conditions—an important variable when you’re benchmarking wireless performance. The tool measures latency between two networked PCs by sending a 100-byte packet on a round trip over the network every 50 milliseconds (100 bytes is the typical packet size on gaming networks, and 50ms is the typical interval between packets on the same). I used my longtime favorite 802.11n Wi-Fi router, a dual-band Asus RT-N66U, for these tests.

The GaNE benchmark, which measures latency and jitter, shows the Killer NIC to be the superior Wi-Fi adapter for latency-sensitive applications such as online games.

I set up the two wireless clients about 9 feet from the router in the same room, so no walls stood in between, and I connected them to the router’s 2.4GHz network. I then performed six runs of the GaNE benchmark. GaNE reported an average ping time for the Killer Wireless-N 1202 of about 1.5 milliseconds, and an average ping of nearly 4 milliseconds for the Intel card. What’s more, GaNE measured one-and-a-half times more jitter with Intel’s card than it did with Qualcomm’s. The Killer NIC delivered similar performance when I switched the clients over to the router’s 5GHz network—slightly less than 2 milliseconds—but Intel’s card registered a much higher average ping of nearly 8 milliseconds.

I also used the Asus RT-N66U to compare the adapters’ TCP-throughput performance, using JPERF (the Java front end to the TCP-throughput benchmark iPERF). The two adapters traded places on the 2.4GHz frequency band, but when the Killer Wireless-N 1202 won, it won by a significant margin. When the client was in the same room as the router, 9 feet away with no walls in between, it was 10.7 mbps faster than Intel’s component. And when the client was in my home office, 65 feet away and separated by three insulated interior walls, the Killer NIC was more than 25 mbps faster. At the two locations at which Intel’s adapter prevailed—in the kitchen (20 feet from the router) and in the home theater (35 feet from the router)—the margins were just 0.5 mbps and 4.0 mbps respectively.

Qualcomm's Killer Wireless-N 1202 and Intel's Advanced-N 6230 had comparable performance on the 2.4GHz band, but the Killer NIC was much faster when situated far from the router.

When I tested each adapter on the 5GHz network, Intel’s NIC performed much better—at close range, at least. In the bedroom test, the Centrino Advanced-N 6230 delivered TCP throughput of 196.0 mbps to the Killer’s 121.0 mbps. And when I moved the clients to the kitchen, Intel’s component was more than twice as fast as Qualcomm’s. But when I tested each client at longer distances, the tables turned, and the Killer NIC delivered dramatically higher TCP throughput than Intel’s card. In the home theater, the Killer delivered 81.1 mbps to the Centrino’s 30.1 mbps; and in the home office, Qualcomm’s card produced a rate of 63.8 mbps to Intel’s 34.9 mbps.

On the 5GHz band, Intel's adapter was much faster than the Killer NIC at close range. But the Killer card turned the tables at long range.

So Qualcomm’s Killer Wireless-N 1202 is a great Wi-Fi adapter. What happens if you’ve upgraded—or are planning to upgrade—to a router based on the new 802.11ac standard? Well, such routers are backward-compatible with 802.11n, so a Killer NIC will still work with one. But if that’s where you’re at, I think the better bet is to switch to an 802.11ac adapter. In fact, some notebook manufacturers—including Alienware—are already offering 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapters as standard equipment on higher-end laptop models (and tellingly, Alienware does not offer the Killer NIC—which is currently available only in 802.11n configurations—as an option on those models).

You should also remember your other option: a hardwired ethernet connection. If you don’t mind stringing cable, a hardwired connection will be faster than any wireless setup, and you won’t have to worry much about latency or jitter at all. But most people don’t want to hassle with cables these days, because wireless connections are so much more convenient.

If you’re buying a new gaming notebook and the seller offers the Killer NIC as a modestly priced upgrade (say, no more than $30), it’s definitely worth the money. The same goes if you’re upgrading a laptop with a Mini PCIe expansion slot and two internal antennas (Qualcomm's Killer Wireless-N1103 supports three antennas). But if you can get an 802.11ac adapter, that would be an even better investment. In fact, I’m surprised Qualcomm isn’t already offering a Killer NIC based on that spec.

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
More by Michael Brown

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The tech behind EVE Online's 'Battle of 6VDT,' the biggest brouhaha in gaming history

The battle of 6VDT, as it's now known, was a historic moment for video games. Four thousand players, representing two of the biggest power blocs in the popular space MMORPG Eve Online, slugged it out Sunday in a gigantic virtual Cannae that resulted in the destruction of more than 2,500 ships and effectively ended a long and bitter conflict.

Just another day at the office for Iceland-based CCP Games, creators of Eve Online, despite the enormous demands placed upon the company's infrastructure as a result of the clash.

Eve, which launched to minimal fanfare in 2003, is known both for its unforgiving difficulty curve and wide range of available gameplay experiences thanks to an in-game economy driven almost entirely by player activity, everything from industry to finance to exploration to combat is part and parcel of the Eve experience.

Players are even allowed to govern parts of the game world itself which, unlike most other MMOs, is contained within a single instance, meaning that all players are occupying the same virtual realm and coalitions of space-holding players like the CFC (Cluster-[rude word] Coalition) and Test Alliance Please Ignore are among the most powerful entities in the game.

CCPA view of the Battle for 6VDT from afar. The blue spheres are warp bubbles, which prevent pilots from warping out of the area.

CCP told PC Gamer last month that the hardware for Tranquility, as the central game server is known, includes almost 4,000GB of RAM and 2,574GHz of processing power. Tranquility resides in London.

Even with all that computing muscle, however, the thousands-vs-thousands battles impose a great strain on Tranquility, particularly given that the rest of the game has to continue to work properly. So CCP came up with a three-tiered hardware architecture that allows them to manage load as efficiently as possible, and implemented a "time dilation" system that slows down gameplay to help compensate.

Individual star systems can be moved to more or less powerful hardware, depending on demand, according to CCP software director Erlender Thorsteinsson.

"The hardware hosting solar systems / servicing location nodes is of three different types. The most powerful type is used for Jita [the game's main commercial hub] and fleet fights, and the second most powerful services for smaller trade hubs like the Amarr Solar System and the rest of the universe," he told Network World.

Software engineer Brian Bosse said that the top-tier hardware was used for the 6VDT fight, as well as the systems used by each side to stage their massive fleets. He also noted that a key factor in the CCP team's timely preparations was a manual notification tool that the company asks players to use in advance of a major fleet action.

CCP

"We have automated systems in place to service requests that come in from the aforementioned form.  On the day indicated on the requests, it properly reacted to them and put the target system - 6VDT-H and the two staging systems that pilots use to prepare for action on the server that we have in place for heavy load situations," Bosse said.

Two earlier clashes between the CFC and TEST weren't flagged to CCP using the notification form, however. While one such battle was fought without any hiccups, another resulted in a server crash that disconnected the combatants and likely spared TEST a serious defeat.

"Sometimes in such situations we'll move other systems that are on the same server as a large fight away in order to ease things up, but that comes at the cost of disconnecting players that are in those other systems. In the case of Z9PP, human error struck and the fight system itself was moved which was, to put it bluntly, unfortunate," said Bosse.

"It is fairly likely that Asakai and Z9PP-H were both running on our 3rd tier hardware. Most certainly not on the 1st tier and probably not on the 2nd tier either," agreed Thorsteinsson.

[Now read: Into the wormhole: An afternoon with EVE Online's least understood demographic]

In the case of 6VDT, however, the company was able to bring its most powerful nodes to bear, and the battle went off more or less without a hitch, though with extensive time dilation in place.

Besides carefully monitoring for anomalous system behavior, Thorsteinsson said, there wasn't much extra work for the CCP team."I spent most of my time on Twitter, and digging through historical population data," he said.

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