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The Internet is optimized for throughput at lowest cost. No amount of good netcode that you write can compensate for this. The problem is the internet itself.

The Internet is optimized for throughput at lowest cost. No amount of good netcode that you write can compensate for this. The problem is the internet itself. The internet doesn’t care about your game. The Internet did change, such that streaming movies became viable. Given that games are now bigger than movies, could it be argued that that the network lag we're seeing is the industry lagging behind the culture? (Which it generally does, at least a little.) A part of this might well involve special deals between large companies involving specialized infrastructure. There are such things now involved with movie streaming. Google's plans involve the infrastructure part of that already. What happens to net neutrality? Once game streaming becomes mature, then it's only a matter of time for App streaming to follow. We'll be back in the mainframe days, just with much larger companies with much larger multi-box cloud "mainframes", commanding the attention of a much larger portion of the population and the culture. "The computer is your friend. Trust the computer!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)

politician 8y ago
> What happens to net neutrality? Counterintuitively, the market that Network Next is making shifts us closer to actual net neutrality than relying on the benevolence of FCC or Comcast by putting power into the hands of content providers where previously they were at the mercy of last-mile ISPs. If businesses can collectively bid for performance from private networks to offset actions by last-mile ISPs to cut costs and reduce service, then they also have the power to organize a general strike by refusing to bid for performance from traffic from specific ISPs until they work out better rates throughout the value chain. So I see this as a mechanism to restore the spirit of net neutrality despite the best wishes of the FCC.
- mrosett 8y ago
  > If businesses can collectively bid for performance from private networks You realize this is exactly what net neutrality prohibits?
  - gafferongames 8y ago
    Network neutrality does not apply to private networks. But even so, we care deeply about network neutrality. We are creating a truly neutral marketplace where suppliers cannot act in an anti-competitive manner towards buyers, and can only compete on performance and price. To the poster who said that we are trying to restore the true spirit of network neutrality. Bravo, you get it. This is exactly what we intend to do.
milesward 8y ago
Wanna build your game on the same network Stadia uses? Https://cloud.google.com
- gafferongames 8y ago
  Believe it or not, even the routing to google data centers can be improved.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    Not to the datacenters, just to the POPs or edge nodes, after that, it is all private networks. And, afaik, the distance to the closest pop or edge node is a small share of the total distance to the datacenters.
    - gafferongames 8y ago
      We are measuring improvement to google’s own data centers.
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        No, you're measuring improvement to the POP where you peer with Google. Unless you're telling me that Google is giving you access to its private networks all the way to the datacenters, which I'd find hard to believe. Between you and a Google Datacenter, most of the path is through Google's private networks.
        gafferongames 8y ago
        We are measuring significant latency reductions for real players to google data centers right now. You seem to be overestimating how perfectly anycast finds the best PoP to get on the private network. You also assume that google’s private network is optimal from every point on the USA to their own data centers. This is not true. What’s better that google’s network? Everybody else’s, and google’s network, evaluated once every 10 seconds.
fulafel 8y ago
To add to the bandwidth characerisation: Bandwidth has followed an improvement curve since the early days of the internet, though it has slowed down a lot lately. Streaming movies became viable despite the slowing rate of bandwidth improvement. We had 30 kbps modems in the 90s, then 8 Mbit ADSL1 in 1998, 24 MBit ADSL 2+ in 2003s, 40 MBit DOCSIS around the same times. If the speeds had continued to improve at the same exponential curve, consumers would have 100+ gig broadband by now. The same is true about datacenters, the bandwidth per compute capacity available to servers has decreased for a while. Bandwidth is an easier problem than latency, because it's not limited by speed of light.

politician 8y ago

> What happens to net neutrality? Counterintuitively, the market that Network Next is making shifts us closer to actual net neutrality than relying on the benevolence of FCC or Comcast by putting power into the hands of content providers where previously they were at the mercy of last-mile ISPs. If businesses can collectively bid for performance from private networks to offset actions by last-mile ISPs to cut costs and reduce service, then they also have the power to organize a general strike by refusing to bid for performance from traffic from specific ISPs until they work out better rates throughout the value chain. So I see this as a mechanism to restore the spirit of net neutrality despite the best wishes of the FCC.

mrosett 8y ago
> If businesses can collectively bid for performance from private networks You realize this is exactly what net neutrality prohibits?
- gafferongames 8y ago
  Network neutrality does not apply to private networks. But even so, we care deeply about network neutrality. We are creating a truly neutral marketplace where suppliers cannot act in an anti-competitive manner towards buyers, and can only compete on performance and price. To the poster who said that we are trying to restore the true spirit of network neutrality. Bravo, you get it. This is exactly what we intend to do.

milesward 8y ago

Wanna build your game on the same network Stadia uses? Https://cloud.google.com

gafferongames 8y ago
Believe it or not, even the routing to google data centers can be improved.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  Not to the datacenters, just to the POPs or edge nodes, after that, it is all private networks. And, afaik, the distance to the closest pop or edge node is a small share of the total distance to the datacenters.
  - gafferongames 8y ago
    We are measuring improvement to google’s own data centers.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      No, you're measuring improvement to the POP where you peer with Google. Unless you're telling me that Google is giving you access to its private networks all the way to the datacenters, which I'd find hard to believe. Between you and a Google Datacenter, most of the path is through Google's private networks.
      - gafferongames 8y ago
        We are measuring significant latency reductions for real players to google data centers right now. You seem to be overestimating how perfectly anycast finds the best PoP to get on the private network. You also assume that google’s private network is optimal from every point on the USA to their own data centers. This is not true. What’s better that google’s network? Everybody else’s, and google’s network, evaluated once every 10 seconds.

fulafel 8y ago

To add to the bandwidth characerisation: Bandwidth has followed an improvement curve since the early days of the internet, though it has slowed down a lot lately. Streaming movies became viable despite the slowing rate of bandwidth improvement. We had 30 kbps modems in the 90s, then 8 Mbit ADSL1 in 1998, 24 MBit ADSL 2+ in 2003s, 40 MBit DOCSIS around the same times. If the speeds had continued to improve at the same exponential curve, consumers would have 100+ gig broadband by now. The same is true about datacenters, the bandwidth per compute capacity available to servers has decreased for a while. Bandwidth is an easier problem than latency, because it's not limited by speed of light.