Re:The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games
by Retric on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @11:45AM
(#21764170)
As you say, Riot Direct is depending on the internet. Sure, adding routes can make slight improvements, but outside of high frequency traders or data centers users are semi randomly geographically separated. This puts a hard upper bound on any improvement of reasonable cost that quickly approaches just adding more routes on the internet.
Having said that, I admit it’s not pure snake oil and provides minor benefits to their customers.
Assuming a 'fair' network. In absence of Net Neutrality it was "Dear company X, you better pay us or your packets will be delayed/dropped and your customers unhappy", and " Dear customer Y, you better opt for extra service A,B,C,D, ... if you want to Game/VoiP/VoD/Chat ..." and very much worse.
"Private networks tend to make things worse by having fewer paths available increasing the average minimum distance."
This is not how internetwork routing works. Obviously a straight line darkfibre line from A to B will beat any route a generic Internet can come up with. It is not a case of Riot Direct xor 'the rest of the Internet', but selectively supplementing by deploying handover points at strategic peering locations in the internetworking fabric where things can have a large impact.