Distributed Teams?

Hello, I've used Asset Cache server before but haven't tried Accelerator yet.

As more and more teams are distributed and fully remote these days, I'm wondering if Accelerator would help for a distributed team (not on the local network), if it would be secure, and if not, what would be a good option for a fully remote team as projects get larger?

If I set up Accelerator "in the cloud" would that save me any time or would the bandwidth/transfer time make it not worth doing? Would it be secure or would I have to put it behind a VPN? Is there something like accelerator or asset cache that's backed by a cloud bucket?

Any other distributed teams with experience with speeding up large projects?

Thanks

 

Just here to say that I'm asking myself these exact same questions, & haven't found too many answers...

 

Yeah, partially we want to evaluate what kinds of tradeoff we might get, in terms of bandwidth vs. CPU time. Our current project can sometimes require 1-2 hours of asset imports depending on different scenarios, & at that scale we're wondering if a system of distributed Accelerator servers & mirrors might make more sense.

In terms of security, there's obviously the TLS encryption in traffic, which is good, but I've also been wondering if & how to restrict access to an Accelerator server. For instance, I currently have Accelerator running at a known URL on my computer, A. In the idealised setup, a colleague could be working on computer B, say on projects X & Y. Their global Unity Editor settings point to my URL as cache server, & so they get the benefit of pulling assets from A instead of processing them locally (ignoring bandwidth completely for the moment). Can I guarantee that a malicious actor cannot connect to my cache server on A? If they create a new project, Z, can they also point their cache server to my computer? Could they theoretically devise a way to pull content from my Accelerator server, essentially leaking the game?

 

Ah yeah, I'd read that section but wasn't 100% clear on the implications. So as I understand it: we have our approved users listed in the "Project Members" section of the Unity project dashboard (on the web); and anyone who wants to connect to the Accelerator server has to be logged into their Unity editor as one of those accounts? And if they're not logged in to their editor as one of the listed accounts, the connection to the Accelerator will fail?

I'll try connecting myself from a logged-out Unity editor, but if that's indeed the case then this might be all the security we need (we're also hoping to enforce 2FA for all our employee Unity accounts, but that's a separate discussion).

 

Ah okay. So as I understand it now, there's no strict identity verification, at least on Accelerator's side, and so someone without a valid Unity login (attached to the project) could log in & access the cache server?

Just in terms of diligence – how might that work? I guess I'm struggling to understand how a malicious actor could go from having an empty Unity project (not connected to any Services) and no developer login, to being able to download the contents of an Accelerator cache. Admittedly, they'd only end up with a copy of the processed assets, and not the whole Unity project per se... anyway, I'm going to ask our DRM about this question as well, but I'd be happy to hear any input you might add.