
The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games - gafferongames
https://www.networknext.com/post/the-internet-doesnt-care-about-your-game
======
edynoid
Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality.
No need to pay lip service to the idea then. The obvious danger here is that
small indie studios may not be able to afford making enjoyable real-time
multiplayer games.

How about improving public internet infrastructure instead?

~~~
huffmsa
I can pay FedEx to get my shit somewhere faster than my competitors.

My customers are delighted by this and in turn they spend more with me and
less with my USPS shipping competitors.

Data packets are just digital shipped goods. The same rules should apply.

~~~
nannal
There are a number of feasible things which are not permitted by law. There
are significant advantages to ensuring net neutrality exists and is
maintained.

~~~
huffmsa
Great, so make it law that you can only allocate a certain percentage of your
network to priority traffic.

Or that any unbought priority capacity is made available to neutral internet
traffic.

It's not a mutually exclusive situation.

~~~
nannal
I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the best method of preserving
net neutrality was by not having it.

It really is a mutually exclusive situation, either all traffic is treated
equally or it isn't.

This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others

~~~
giggles_giggles
This sounds like you are saying that reclassifying ISPs to be regulated under
the FCC instead of the FTC would ban traffic shaping.

Obviously not all packets are equal. VOIP is an example of a high priority
protocol. BitTorrent is low priority.

Legislating traffic shaping at this level would be absurd. Have I been living
in a cave? Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for
network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which
would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

~~~
wtallis
> Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network
> operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would
> prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

At least some of us NN advocates believe it should be illegal for ISPs to
perform the kinds to traffic shaping that explicitly identify and prioritize
certain ports or protocols over others. Because that kind of traffic shaping
is not really necessary to offer good QoS, and thus there's no reason to
continue allowing it.

~~~
giggles_giggles
> that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS

It is nobody on HN's responsibility to educate me on this, but I'd love some
good hearty technical reading on this topic, because this is definitely
counter-intuitive to me. If anyone has a link to a resource on this topic or
feels motivated to type out a technical description of how QoS could work
without explicitly identifying and prioritizing certain traffic, I will read
it raptly and greatly appreciate the additional education.

~~~
wtallis
For home routers, there was a major breakthrough in 2012 with the CoDel AQM
algorithm, which was paired with a flow queuing system to create fq_codel and
later Cake. These systems do not have any rule sets of the form "prioritize
port N". fq_codel and Cake do look at port numbers and protocols, but only for
the purposes of sorting packets into separate bins for separate network flows.
Each bin gets the same set of rules applied to it, so in that sense they are
Neutral.

CoDel on its own prevents a high-latency queue of packets from building up,
but since it operates on a single FIFO queue is indiscriminate about which
packets get dropped when it's time to drop something. fq_codel and Cake will
tend to give priority to new or sparse traffic flows, and when they need to
drop a packet they will drop from a flow that has a standing queue—on the
assumption that those high-bandwidth flows are likely to be less latency/drop
sensitive and probably can back off on their transmit rate. So any protocol
with VOIP-like traffic patterns will tend to get prioritized enough to have
minimal added latency and no packet loss (provided it's using a small share of
available bandwidth), and the packet drops/ECN markings will hit the network
flows that are behaving like TCP bulk file downloads. These heuristics do
imbue fq_codel and Cake with a bias toward certain traffic-handling policies,
but it's very analogous to the heuristics used by a typical operating system
CPU scheduler, and well-grounded theoretically and empirically.

I said at the beginning "for home routers", because these new AQMs have not
yet been incorporated into the kinds of ASICs used for carrier-grade
equipment. But anywhere that it _is_ practical to deploy these algorithms,
they are easier to configure and offer better performance than the now-
obsolete QoS strategies that depend on things like trying to decide whether
port 53 should go to the head of the line to speed up DNS queries. These new
algorithms have proven that ISPs do not need to buy any equipment to do things
like detect and throttle bittorrent traffic in order to prevent it from
overwhelming their network. They just need to upgrade their routers and
gateways to use good general-purpose traffic management techniques.

~~~
giggles_giggles
Wow that was an absolutely fascinating read thank you so much!

------
irq-1
Valve offers this for free:

[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/stea...](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/steamdatagramrelay)

> Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) is Valve's virtual private gaming network. Using
> our APIs, you can not only carry your game traffic over the Valve backbone
> that is dedicated for game content, you also gain access to our network of
> relays. Relaying the traffic protects your servers and players from DoS
> attack, because IP addresses are never revealed. All traffic you receive is
> authenticated, encrypted, and rate-limited. Furthermore, for a surprisingly
> high number of players, we can also find a faster route through our network,
> which actually improves player ping times.

~~~
Const-me
For 33% of your sales, not for free.

~~~
SkyBelow
Don't they allow you to sell steam keys without giving them a cut?

~~~
brandon
The specific rules for key sales are covered here:
[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)

------
devit
Probably should at least change the title, since this is a sales pitch for
Network Next and not an article about multiplayer games.

~~~
Accujack
Yup, this is just spam.

------
pjc50
> every ten seconds, Network Next runs a bid on its marketplace to find the
> best route for your players across our supplier networks.

> The winning bid carries your player's traffic for the next 10 seconds, then
> the process is repeated every 10 seconds, for each player

Markets in everything! Like realtime ad markets, it's one of those things
that's simultaneously an impressive technical achievement and a Randian
nickel-and-diming nightmare.

Like surge pricing, I wonder if there's any incentive for some of the actors
to manipulate the system to raise prices ...

~~~
ambicapter
You could start undercutting bids when your competitor's games come out,
hoping that if their game's multiplayer is shitty enough on opening weekend
it'll reduce the game's playing population in the long run.

------
BlueTemplar
A lot of games already (excusively!) use private networks these days, and even
older games like Dawn of War 1 and Civilization 4* had their Internet
multiplayer removed for Steam's (V?)PN.

A lot of blame is on "I"SPs filtering traffic and sometimes not even giving
access to the router so that the host can do port forwarding!

*Non-Steam Civ4 still has Internet multiplayer. After complaints Steam also allowed to revert to the latest official patch using their "beta" feature (for some reason the new Steam patch also breaks the mods - even if they are played even more overwhelmingly in single player! - and Civ4 has one of the biggest mod communities thanks to its semi-open source C++/Python/XML modding).

~~~
Snetry
I'm fairly sure Steam does not use a private network

~~~
blattimwind
It does. CSGO game traffic is exclusively routed through Valve's relay network
for example.

[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/stea...](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/steamdatagramrelay)

~~~
deelowe
But... Steam isn't CSGO or even Valve for that matter? These are orthogonal.

~~~
ls612
It's a Steamworks API I think.

------
mrkeen
> The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games

Good. This is how things should be with regard to dependencies.

Games depend on the internet. If the internet gets rewritten, you'd have to
rewrite your games. Low likelihood (of the internet changing), "medium" cost
(to rewrite games).

If the internet _did_ care about multiplayer games, then changes to
multiplayer games could require us to change the internet too. High likelihood
(of games changing), enormous cost (to update the internet).

~~~
raxxorrax
I think it should care about games and that it already does. A lot of
development for computers was made possible because of gaming.

Today streaming is also a huge factor. But the principle is the same that any
low latency application will profit from expectations that are created by
consumers on a large scale.

So I think the premise of the article is wrong. The "net" does care about
speed and latency. And I doubt a Balkanization of private networks will be
advantageous for anyone besides the respective providers. Premium traffic
shouldn't be the goal. Common infrastructure that can handle the load is and
exclusive network access should be minimized to as few applications as
possible.

------
PeterStuer
Yet another network provisioner's marketing department trying to spin the
'network neutrality is bad' spiel as if life would be so much better if only
those pesky regulators would allow any means for ISP's to extract the maximum
profit out of every packet, even if that means creating artificial scarcity.

It's like hearing Nestle arguing how the availability of drinkable municipal
tap water is bad for their bottled water business.

~~~
cyborgx7
Their entire business sounds like a way to circumvent network neutrality, by
claiming their network of interconnected private networks is something other
than the internet.

~~~
Spivak
It doesn't really seem to be circumventing NN any more than a VPN.

I see no reason people shouldn't allowed to build interconnects not connected
to the wider internet and charge for their use.

~~~
cyborgx7
I'm not necessarily against the concept in every case. But where do you draw
the line between that, and just an alternative internet?

------
Aeolun
In my fairly broad experience, the biggest enemy of performant gameplay is
lack of servers, or incredibly shitty netcode.

It’s interesting that there’s apparently no average netcode. Multiplayer
either functions (apparently) perfectly, or it’s shit.

~~~
inetknght
> _the biggest enemy of performant gameplay is lack of servers, or incredibly
> shitty netcode._

If an ISP were down-prioritizing unknown packets (such as most games since
they don't usually use HTTP) then how would you notice that instead of
"incredibly shitty netcode"?

~~~
PeterStuer
There is no such thing as an 'unknown packet'. Your ISP employs Deep Packet
Inspection. So they can downgrade your game but not mine because I pay them
to.

[https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/deep-
pack...](https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/deep-packet-
inspection-DPI)

------
kristofferc
From my experience of playing way too much computer games in my youth, the
Internet seems to work extremely well for multiplayer games... Of course, if
you play against someone on the other side of the world, there will be some
lag but that is mostly due to things that are not so easy to change, like the
speed of light.

~~~
majewsky
> the speed of light

We still have quite a bit of optimizations to make until real-life latencies
are limited by the speed of light over such distances.

For any given two points, the shortest distance between them along earth's
surface is never going to be longer than half the earth's circumference. Light
travels that distance in 67ms:

    
    
      $ units --verbose 'pi * earthradius / c' milliseconds
              pi * earthradius / c = 66.763248 milliseconds
    

Double that for a full roundtrip time.

In reality, the ping time between myself (in Germany) and the opposite site of
the earth (in this case, my company's datacenter in Sydney) is more like 300
ms, i.e. less than 50% of the speed limit imposed by the laws of physics.

~~~
reallydontask
Your calculation doesn't seem to account for the fact that light in fibre
travels slower than in vacuum, 2/3 if memory serves, so it's a lot closer than
you think.

A lot of the latency will be due to the conversion between light and
electricity for processing in routers/switches. If we had all optical
processing that would probably bring the latency down close to the theoretical
limit

~~~
majewsky
As I said, we still have quite the margin for optimization.

------
Porthos9K
Isn't this why we used to get together and have LAN parties, so that we could
play on a 10/100mbps network without other Internet traffic in the way? (And
so that if a player started trash-talking the rest of us could beat the shit
out of them?)

Also, was the sales pitch in the second half really necessary?

~~~
toxicFork
The point of the post is the sales pitch.

~~~
_Microft
And the submitter is the CEO as it seems.

"user: gafferongames

created: November 26, 2014

karma: 173

about: Founder and CEO, Network Next."

~~~
tempguy9999
Is this within HN rules to post sales pitches, esp. by HN members, at least
without being very clear about it?

~~~
hombre_fatal
Surely this is preferable to the trivial circumvention of your proposal where
you just ask a friend to post something for you. A trick that basically
silences all Redditors that would otherwise complain about “ads”. I’d rather
people just post their own stuff and we judge the content on its own basis.

~~~
techlaw
It is preferable to the extent that the poster is transparent about their
intentions.

The user name posting this could be 'NetworkNext' or a brief disclosure could
be in the original post -- either of these would provide some transparency.
With transparency there would be fewer clicks on the link but greater trust in
the content.

~~~
tempguy9999
Exactly this. I'm fine with people posting their own stuff but _I want to
know_.

------
anilakar
Paid advert from a private transit provider.

------
STRML
Why is obvious marketing material allowed here?

------
leg100
This reflects the fact that a shadow 'internet' is emerging: alongside the
public internet with its tier 1 ISPs, there are global private networks with
vast bandwidth, ostensibly for a company's own use, but with opportunities
arising for use cases just like this, selling off surplus bandwidth via
marketplaces.

------
shadowgovt
The Internet also doesn't care about near-zero latency for things like
telerobotic surgery, so this could very well be a step in the right direction.

Granted, regarding the specific details of _this_ solution, I don't think I
want to trust my telerobotic surgery to a system that could let a multiplayer
game distributor out-bid my knife control packets...

------
onion2k
This must be why there aren't any multiplayer games that use the internet.

Oh. Wait.

~~~
Spivak
This is also why behind the scenes large game publishers have their own
private networks. Valve is probably the largest.

------
nixpulvis
I think at a high level we can all agree that there are _two_ main classes of
networks. Bandwidth sensitive: for example Netflix, or a JS bloated website.
And latency sensitive: for example gaming and autonomous vehicles.

My top concern is transparency with respect to what routes are available. I
wouldn't want my domain to be excluded.

How the backend economics play out will influence this. Large players will eat
the variations (in the beginning at least), and small devs could have access
to a better tier of networks.

I just fear pricing models will become even more user hostile however
(compared to the current service economy). Think Uber pricing for games.
Surging to 4x+ prices after school, for example.

------
lonelappde
"Net Neutrality" is a poisoned term. All it means is "good prices on MY use
case."

People whom want free stuff claim "neutrality" means "same price for
everything (without defining the units of 'everything'), and no QoS"

"neutrality" means not discriminating on the basis of _identity_. It means
offering the same terms to everyone, and not letting Disney pay a fee to ban
Comcast or BitTorrent, not offering only one flat price for all possible
services.

------
drivingmenuts
This looks and smells like an advertisement, rather than an article.

~~~
huffmsa
It's pretty well disguised

~~~
chungus_khan
Not really. The entire article is about pitching their service and the post
here was made by the founder of the company.

------
miker64
I see a bunch of network neutrality confusion here.

This is not anti-net neutrality, nor is it pro-net neutrality.

It's saying: Rather than accept the unknown path between your customers and
you, pay for this service and you can use our optimized backbone reducing the
amount of time your traffic is on random networks that aren't optimized for
the exact network tuning you need/want.

Network neutrality has to do with public transit networks not favoring certain
traffic, generally identified by having _paid_ for preferential treatment.

These folks are _not_ running a public transit network, they're running a
_private transit network_ with peering points back to the public internet for
access by consumers and producers.

------
iamaelephant
Articles should declare up front if they are sales pieces. I got most of the
way through this article without realizing Network Next was a product and I
was reading a marketing piece. Not cool.

------
forgottenpass
I'm a bit lost. Which of these is this advertisement claiming:

\- Without their route planning, latency is introduced by packets spending too
much time in a device while it chooses which route to send them?

\- Without their route planning, latency is introduced by packets traveling
geographically inefficent routes?

\- Internet routing technology isn't able determine the best path to send
packets along?

\- The internet links are too saturated, route onto our network as fast as
possible?

------
proc0
I wonder if something like a gaming VPN is any improvement on the current way
games use networking resources. This could be a service that 3rd party games
require, or could be built into Unity etc., such that online multiplayer (at
least on PC) could be secure and also fast.

~~~
LinuxBender
It is useful, or in some cases required when inbound ports/nats can not be
opened up. That's why hamachi was so popular with gamers for a while. You
basically bridge your LAN with the other players. Valve is just doing this in
a way that is more integrated into their platform. In garry's mode, they call
it "Peer to peer" but they are using this relay network.

~~~
proc0
Ah nice, was wondering if Valve did this.

------
BlueTemplar
Depends on the game: a real time first person shooter needs better latency
than a real time strategy game which needs much better latency than a turn
based game.

------
excalibur
It's the Internet We Deserve™

------
saschag
whats with the advertisement on HN? it's not even an issue for none of my
multiplayer games.

------
everyone
This is obviously a thinly veiled ad. Why is this here?

------
ajnin
> neutral marketplace

Nothing neutral about that. The one with the most money gets the better QoS.
We don't need yet another market ruining things the real world uses so that
some finance type can make bank. I wish ads for hostile ideas like that one
would be flagged as such.

------
drharby
Ok, tell that to the wow classic servers all operating a medium to high
capacity.

EDIT: oh I see, this is an ad, not news, got it.

