Riot Games, the purveyors of the biggest game on the net League of Legends, thinks the net isn't big enough for them.
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So what do you do when you're in the biggest pond already but it's still not enough? Why, build a bigger pond, of course. And that's just what Riot intends to do. In a forum post from Charlie Houser (Riot Ahab), the company announced plans to optimize internet connections for League of Legends.
"Currently, ISPs focus primarily on moving large volumes of data in seconds or minutes, which is good for buffered applications like YouTube or Netflix but not so good for real-time games, which need to move very small amounts of data in milliseconds." he noted, adding, "On top of that, your internet connection might bounce all over the country instead of running directly to where it needs to go, which can impact your network quality and ping whether the game server is across the country or right down the street."
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The company is building its own "direct network for League traffic and working with ISPs across the US and Canada to connect players to this network."
It is quite similar to the way Wall Street traders laid out a cable across the Atlantic ocean in order to better facilitate high frequency trading. Of course, League of Legends hasn't crashed the world economy. But if any game could...
Ahab stuck around the forum post to answer any questions players might have. A few choice answers are listed below:
"It will take a bit of tinkering, but the goal is to eventually get every player's connection on the shortest route possible to the game servers, which includes west coast players. Everyone should see a marginal improvement once everything is up and running."
"We now peer with Comcast, Charter, Shaw, Telus, and we are in negotiations with Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cox Communications, CenturyLink, and many other ISPs. We're targeting those that carry most of our players, so odds are your ISP is already on the list of folks we are talking to!"
They're looking to have all the paperwork squared away by March. However, Ahab noted that "the March goal should include getting the agreements done (and we are currently on schedule in that regard), but the back-and-forth on contracts never fails to amaze me on how long it can take!"
There will soon be three internets: the one we all use, the one the military utilizes and finally, the LoLnet.
