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#Actualhplus0603

Posted 21 October 2012 - 10:15 PM

@hplus0603
First I will address the why(value proposition):
The network itself is the core which I plan to build several services on. These services does not exist today and for obvious reason I do not wish to share them on a public forum.


My experience, and that of the general start-up community, has been that ideas are a dime a dozen. Your problem is going to be finding the resources (people, money, connections, time) to deliver your plan. If some big company thought it was a good idea, they'd already be doing it, so the risk if "idea theft" is typically zero.

Note that this is true even for startups in Silicon Valley. For example: No venture capitalist will sign a non-disclosure agreement. And, truth be told, they probably already heard some other company pitch the same idea you have anyway. What they are looking for is the ability to execute, plus a potential large, lucrative, unserved market. When the right team comes along with the right idea and market opportunity, is when they invest.

So, the network I want to build is a crucial mean in order to provide the services that I want.


Why? How wouldn't it work on the regular internet with virtual geographic grouping based on ping?

Live! network:
As I said, it is not suitable for my purposes because despite the fact that everyone can play with everyone all around the world, IN PRACTICE, if all of the players in the specific game want to have low enough RTT - they be playing with players which are close to them geographically.


Right. The infrastructure of the ISP and the realities of transmitting data from point A to point B make it so. The only way to improve this is to know who all your customers are, run special wiring/fiber straight to those customers, to a regional center, and then to wherever your server center is, and do it better than the AT&Ts and Comcasts and Verizons of the world. And, even so, you're only going to be better by some small factor depending largely on internal network overheads for the current ISPs. It's not like the current internet is run by people who don't know what they're doing -- they're already interested in the best possible performance of their network.

So even though it allow wide geographical network, it is not practical solution for my problem because people will be matchmake with people who are close to them.


You can build a software system like Xbox Live! that matchmakes based on whatever parameters you want. What you can't do, is make routers faster than they are, or information travel faster than the speed of light.

I'm looking for practical solution where in large geographical area - everyone can player with everyone and have low enough RTT.


Again -- what part of that RTT are you looking to improve on? Doing a traceroute from me to Google, about 2/3 of my time is spent winding its way through Comcast networks (actually going AROUND the bay about 1.2 times...) before they hand off to Google peering. This is pretty typical for a cost-driven end-user ISP. If you want to actually improve the gaming experience, the biggest cut is probably for the residential ISP, and you're going to have to wire each of your customers with a superior technology. Fiber is cheap, but digging holes in streets is pretty expensive.

3. Create a "low latency gamers network" that will reduce the latency to <80ms RTT between players all across USA to my game servers center. (with that I will create a "single player pool" - i.e. everyone can play with everyone within the USA and have RTT of <80ms = there are no servers with low/high ping because everyone connect to the same servers center.)


If users access your data center through residential ISPs, I don't think that's going to happen. Some ISPs are great, some days. Other ISPs are terrible, most days.

Ubiquity is just a hosted data center provider. And they even boast of using a brand of hardware which is not at the top of my list if I had to build a high-performance trouble-free data center. They list their actual ISP connections (Level 3, GTT, etc.) They will not get you any closer to the ISPs than any other hosting location. Typically, you'll want to co-locate in a facility with high connectivity, and own your own hardware. You want to get as close as possible to the main places where ISPs interconnect (PAIX, NYIIX, SIX, etc)

Sure, you can obtain some IP address prefix, multi-home it across many data centers, and BGP announce them in a bunch of different locations. This will make user packets enter your control sooner. Then what? If you build long-haul connectivity, you will lease capacity from the various backbone providers. They will route this on the same network as they route general internet traffic. They may establish virtual circuits for you, so it looks like a direct connection to you, but underneath, it's the same fiber, and the same routers. Which, by the way, is the same fiber and routers used for long-distance telephony in many cases.

Why would your hop, and your entry into the long-haul backbones, be any better than that of the customer's residential ISP? Chances are, it would just look like a little detour -- packets come from ISP, go to you, turn around, and go to backhaul, and then enter you again at your destination. If you enter Level 3 networks or Sprint networks or any other backhaul provider, then chances are pretty good that you'll do that on the same terms as Comcast, Verizon, or any other end-user ISP will.

It might be good if you could provide some data on why existing latencies are not good enough, and why 80 ms is the magic number to beat. It would also be interesting to see data about how many users already have this latency to, say, a data center in LA, or Texas, or Virginia, or London, or whatever, and then compare to how many more you think you can get by making whatever improvements you're trying to make.

My guess is that, if you break down the typical latency seen by the typical gamer, you're unlikely to be able to significantly improve their experience unless you can somehow make a newer, better, connection to their home, and then also do a better job of hauling those packets to your data center than the companies that have been doing it for 20 years. If you could show data that shows that there is a significant market for this, and you can do it at a price that works for that market, that would be an awesome, big, world-changing project!

#1hplus0603

Posted 21 October 2012 - 10:15 PM

@hplus0603
First I will address the why(value proposition):
The network itself is the core which I plan to build several services on. These services does not exist today and for obvious reason I do not wish to share them on a public forum.


Ideas are a dime a dozen. Your problem is going to be finding the resources (people, money, connections, time) to deliver your plan. If some big company thought it was a good idea, they'd already be doing it, so the risk if "idea theft" is typically zero.

Note that this is true even for startups in Silicon Valley. For example: No venture capitalist will sign a non-disclosure agreement. And, truth be told, they probably already heard some other company pitch the same idea you have anyway. What they are looking for is the ability to execute, plus a potential large, lucrative, unserved market. When the right team comes along with the right idea and market opportunity, is when they invest.

So, the network I want to build is a crucial mean in order to provide the services that I want.


Why? How wouldn't it work on the regular internet with virtual geographic grouping based on ping?

Live! network:
As I said, it is not suitable for my purposes because despite the fact that everyone can play with everyone all around the world, IN PRACTICE, if all of the players in the specific game want to have low enough RTT - they be playing with players which are close to them geographically.


Right. The infrastructure of the ISP and the realities of transmitting data from point A to point B make it so. The only way to improve this is to know who all your customers are, run special wiring/fiber straight to those customers, to a regional center, and then to wherever your server center is, and do it better than the AT&Ts and Comcasts and Verizons of the world. And, even so, you're only going to be better by some small factor depending largely on internal network overheads for the current ISPs. It's not like the current internet is run by people who don't know what they're doing -- they're already interested in the best possible performance of their network.

So even though it allow wide geographical network, it is not practical solution for my problem because people will be matchmake with people who are close to them.


You can build a software system like Xbox Live! that matchmakes based on whatever parameters you want. What you can't do, is make routers faster than they are, or information travel faster than the speed of light.

I'm looking for practical solution where in large geographical area - everyone can player with everyone and have low enough RTT.


Again -- what part of that RTT are you looking to improve on? Doing a traceroute from me to Google, about 2/3 of my time is spent winding its way through Comcast networks (actually going AROUND the bay about 1.2 times...) before they hand off to Google peering. This is pretty typical for a cost-driven end-user ISP. If you want to actually improve the gaming experience, the biggest cut is probably for the residential ISP, and you're going to have to wire each of your customers with a superior technology. Fiber is cheap, but digging holes in streets is pretty expensive.

3. Create a "low latency gamers network" that will reduce the latency to <80ms RTT between players all across USA to my game servers center. (with that I will create a "single player pool" - i.e. everyone can play with everyone within the USA and have RTT of <80ms = there are no servers with low/high ping because everyone connect to the same servers center.)


If users access your data center through residential ISPs, I don't think that's going to happen. Some ISPs are great, some days. Other ISPs are terrible, most days.

Ubiquity is just a hosted data center provider. And they even boast of using a brand of hardware which is not at the top of my list if I had to build a high-performance trouble-free data center. They list their actual ISP connections (Level 3, GTT, etc.) They will not get you any closer to the ISPs than any other hosting location. Typically, you'll want to co-locate in a facility with high connectivity, and own your own hardware. You want to get as close as possible to the main places where ISPs interconnect (PAIX, NYIIX, SIX, etc)

Sure, you can obtain some IP address prefix, multi-home it across many data centers, and BGP announce them in a bunch of different locations. This will make user packets enter your control sooner. Then what? If you build long-haul connectivity, you will lease capacity from the various backbone providers. They will route this on the same network as they route general internet traffic. They may establish virtual circuits for you, so it looks like a direct connection to you, but underneath, it's the same fiber, and the same routers. Which, by the way, is the same fiber and routers used for long-distance telephony in many cases.

Why would your hop, and your entry into the long-haul backbones, be any better than that of the customer's residential ISP? Chances are, it would just look like a little detour -- packets come from ISP, go to you, turn around, and go to backhaul, and then enter you again at your destination. If you enter Level 3 networks or Sprint networks or any other backhaul provider, then chances are pretty good that you'll do that on the same terms as Comcast, Verizon, or any other end-user ISP will.

It might be good if you could provide some data on why existing latencies are not good enough, and why 80 ms is the magic number to beat. It would also be interesting to see data about how many users already have this latency to, say, a data center in LA, or Texas, or Virginia, or London, or whatever, and then compare to how many more you think you can get by making whatever improvements you're trying to make.

My guess is that, if you break down the typical latency seen by the typical gamer, you're unlikely to be able to significantly improve their experience unless you can somehow make a newer, better, connection to their home, and then also do a better job of hauling those packets to your data center than the companies that have been doing it for 20 years. If you could show data that shows that there is a significant market for this, and you can do it at a price that works for that market, that would be an awesome, big, world-changing project!

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