# A Network Analysis on Cloud Gaming: Stadia, GeForce Now and PSNow
## 4 Results
### Cloud Gaming under Mobile Networks  
We now investigate the case of mobile networks to understand to what extent cloud gaming is feasible and what is the reached quality level. Moreover, we are interested in understanding the impact of variable network conditions, and how applications react to network impairments. Here, we focus on Stadia, which streams video content at fixed bitrates, requiring strict bandwidth constraints. We first build on a large-scale measurement campaign run on our previous work [24], to study to what extent current mobile networks are ready to sustain the load and offer suitable conditions for cloud gaming. The dataset that we use includes more than 100k speed test measurements from 20 nodes/locations equipped with SIM cards of 4 operators, located in 2 distinct countries (Norway and Sweden). Each experiment measured latency, downlink, and uplink capacity using multiple TCP connections towards a testing server located in the same country. Moreover, the dataset indicates physical-layer properties such as radio access technology (3G or 4G) and signal strength. The measurement campaign spans the whole of 2018 and includes experiments on different hours of the day and days of the week. We use the dataset to understand how a Stadia cloud gaming session would have performed with the measured network characteristics. This is possible thanks to the steady network usage of Stadia, where different video resolutions utilize almost fixed bandwidth. As such, given the network conditions measured on the speedtest measurements, we consider running Stadia _feasible_ if there is at least 10 Mbit/s available bandwidth. In the case where available bandwidth is in [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44] Mbit/s, a better 1080p video could be transmitted, while more than 44 Mbit/s allow the user to receive a 4\(K\) quality video properly. Figure 5 shows the reached video quality levels, offering a breakdown on 3G and 4G and different signal qualities as measured by the node's radio equipment (The measured Received signal strength indication (RSSI) is mapped to quality levels, as recommended at [[https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/Mobile_Signal_Strength_Recommendations](https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/Mobile_Signal_Strength_Recommendations)]([https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/Mobile_Signal_Strength_Recommendations](https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/Mobile_Signal_Strength_Recommendations)) accessed on 1 October 2021). The figure shows how a poor 3G link does not allow the use of Stadia in most cases, as the available bandwidth is below 10 Mbit/s. The picture changes with medium signal quality, where using Stadia is possible most of the time, with the lowest 720p resolution. An excellent 3G connection allows higher resolution in less than 10% of cases. With 4G, the network generally offers higher bandwidth, and 1080p and 4K are possible, especially with good signal quality. Indeed, 4G links with high signal strength can sustain Stadia 4K streaming 40% of the cases, and only 38% of the times, is the client limited to 720p. Next, we study the capability of the gaming platforms to offer a good gaming session and cope with different mobile network conditions. To this end, we use the PC to run  
Figure 5: Estimated resolution of Stadia sessions on mobile networks. a gaming session and track different quality metrics about the frame rate, expressed in frames per second (_FPS_), the packet loss, and the video resolution quality experienced during the gaming sessions. We focus on Stadia as a case study, since it is available on many devices. To study the gaming session in a controlled mobile network environment, we emulate different mobile network conditions on the Linux gateway by using ERRANT.