Barnacules Nerdgasm was established in 2006 by well-known YouTube personality Jerry Berg. Jerry is a self-proclaimed professional nerd and ex-Microsoft developer. With hundreds of thousands of subscribers and tens of millions of views, Barnacules Nerdgasm is one of the leading YouTube video channels with a growing fan base.

Barnacules Nerdgasm suffered from slow connectivity and performance glitches, as well as outages caused by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks

“Barnacules Nerdgasm YouTube channel is all about technology, so it is critical that there are no technology troubles”, said Jerry. “My audience continues to grow, and the viewers are always asking for more content. I needed a solution that delivers seamless service, high speed and top quality and Mushroom Networks’ Truffle E was the best option to do that job.”

Barnacules Nerdgasm has more than 660,000 subscribers and 64,614,433 views. That type of a follower base required a high availability and high performance network where the live shows were produced. Prior to installing Truffle E, the network was connected to a business-class cable modem. The single cable modem struggled for various applications including uploading video files, which were typically from 4 to 8 Gigabytes of data per show. The transfers got often interrupted, which required a restart to the transfer.

Because of the channel’s popularity, it became a target for DDoS attacks that caused major disruptions or even brought down the channel.

Truffle E, one of Mushroom Networks’ Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) devices was a perfect fit for Barnacules Nerdgasm as the technology provided best-in-class Broadband Bonding and traffic management with a high ROI (Return on Investment).

Barnacules Nerdgasm solved their network performance issues by installing Truffle E, Mushroom Networks’ Broadband Bonding device. Since installing their Truffle E, their network has added one more cable modem, one DSL modem and a fail-over LTE cellular modem. Truffle E combines the 2 cable modems and 1 DSL modem to provide bonded aggregate bandwidth in excess of several hundred mega-bits per second. This setup proved to be much more cost effective then a dedicated fiber-optic line in terms of throughput and delivered near 100 percent reliability.

The boost in uptime of Barnacules Nerdgasm’s connectivity meant the general availability of the cloud-based services increased and outages were nearly eliminated. “My audience continues to grow, and the viewers are always asking for more content. I needed a solution that delivers seamless service, high speed and top quality, and Mushroom Networks’ Truffle E was the best option to do that job”, says Jerry Berg.

Since all Truffle devices are powered by the industry leading Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) architecture, creating specialized tunnels with various features and capabilities enabled Jerry to manage and control his company’s WAN networks with ease. After the implementation, Jerry also could determine the type of traffic flows through his multiple broadband connections by manually manipulating his IP addresses, an ability he did not have with a single cable modem. More specifically, Jerry’s network now has access to Elastic Static IP addresses from a data center (an optional service provided by Mushroom Networks) that is mapped onto his network. This helped him more effectively combat DDoS attacks while also ensuring better video and audio, especially for live streaming events in 1080p.

Truffle devices offer very attractive ROI (Return on Investment) where a rock-solid WAN architecture can be built on cost-effective broadband lines.

Using Truffle, the SD-WAN device that bonds 2 or more broadband lines, will provide the following benefits:

Boost in WAN Performance:

Since Truffle appliances have the ability to bond 2 or more WAN lines for optimum performance, the overall WAN metrics improved. As an example, any transfer from Barnacules Nerdgasm offices to the Internet (or from the Internet to the office) now has the full bonded speed of all the ISP links plugged in, as opposed to an individual line speed.

Boost in WAN Reliability:

Truffle provided self-healing WAN and dynamic failover capabilities. As an example, an ongoing Internet session is now being shielded from any WAN outages, or WAN performance fluctuations, as long as one of the WAN connections is still up.

Reduced WAN Cost:

A single WAN link with comparable SLAs and performance metrics was more expensive, compared to building the comparable WAN via Broadband Bonding appliances.

Reduced Downtime:

Implementing Truffle significantly reduced any emergencies caused by downtime and other networking problems as most WAN related outages and emergencies are now shielded from the applications and therefore can be addressed during regularly scheduled maintenance.

Elastic Static IP:

The Broadband Bonding Service (BBS) provided a set of Elastic Static IP addresses that were mapped from the data center onto the local network. This provided usual static IP features for the local network with the added benefit of the IP addresses being shielded from the network outages. This also eliminated various types of malicious attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).

Barnacules Nerdgasm, established in 2006, is one of the most popular YouTube productions with more than 660,000 subscribers and 64,614,433 views to date. With the ever-growing channel audience, and their demand for more content, Jerry’s channel needed a bandwidth solution that delivers seamless service, high speed and top quality. Once Truffle E was installed, the office WAN connectivity became extremely reliable through the 3 bonded broadband modems. Downtime was practically eliminated. The network achieved over several hundred mega bits per second speeds and had protection against DDoS attacks. These objectives were achieved in a very cost-effective manner, providing cost savings compared to a single WAN connection.