GameRail Network - Direct routes - One Network - Game Traffic Only

All gamers have experienced the frustration and competitive challenges of a problematic connection to their game server at one point or another. The design of the Internet itself is often the cause of a poor quality, slow connection. Using the standard Internet, it is not unusual for data packets moving between a gamer’s computer and a game server to make as many as 20 network hops before they reach their destination. The Internet is a vast framework of connections, much like a highway system. Some roads have many intersections and stoplights, while others are multi-lane superhighways. In this respect, your packets travel among various networks throughout the world consisting of the network facilities owned and operated by numerous different companies. With each “hop” a packet takes and each transition from one company to the next, there is an opportunity for significant latency to be added. The network congestion within and between network nodes causing this latency includes the various other types of traffic gaming must coexist with—everything from email to web surfing to music downloading to peer-to-peer file trading.

A New Network Model
The GameRail Network is an evolution of the network model specifically designed to minimize latency and improve a computer gamer’s online experience. The key to the GameRail model is massive local interconnection. Traffic needs to get on the GameRail Network from your computer as quickly as possible, before it reaches the public Internet. For this reason, we interconnect with the local Internet access providers in each city as well as with numerous game server host providers. The cities are connected together by point-to-point data connections. The design of the GameRail Network allows gaming traffic to get on the private network in the gamer’s home city and then transit over the private network all the way to the site of the game server. GameRail cuts the number of network hops dramatically and consequently significantly reduces latency. And because the data stays on the network end-to-end, GameRail is able to optimize the flow of the traffic, even further reducing network delays. By offering significantly improved connectivity to computer gamers GameRail redefines the expectations of what constitutes a quality online gaming experience.

The Importance of a Performance Network
The quality of a gamer’s network connection can have a significant impact on both where they choose to play and the quality of their game play experience. Online gaming utilizes real-time network traffic to create a shared experience, requiring a high-quality Internet connection to dozens of participants in different geographical locations. In an online game, the players are competing against each other head-to-head, with the player with the fastest reactions usually winning the competition. The quality of an Internet connection to the server has a significant impact on how the server views the player’s reaction time. A lower latency connection gives a player an advantage over players on higher latency connections. Concern over higher latency connections often causes gamers to limit their game playing to servers which are near to their geographic location.

Over the last few years many services have come out to improve your gaming experience. Better PCs, home networking and even high performance game servers. Of all the things that can impact your performance only the network path you take has previously been out of your hands. With GameRail you will now have the best possible routes to your intended server on a network designed to handle the unique requirements of game traffic.