Another PC Add-in Card

[earthworm48]

Seen over at Shacknews (http://www.shacknews.com), apparently a new company has received $4 million in funding for a project working on a new PC card for online games.

Now, startup Bigfoot Networks has just announced that it has obtained $4M in funding to release its first standalone network accelerator card.

The company will bring to market the world's first Gaming Network Accelerator card, which will allow online gamers to play their favorite games with less lag. Lag is the number one problem in online video games today, and Bigfoot Networks is the only company in the world whose sole mission is to fight lag.
Link to Announcement (http://www.shacknews.com/docs/press/030806_bigfootfunding.x)

Hmm. Sounds like it's completely worthless or will become another additional cost that comes with PC gaming especially if it get to the point where people with the card perform better in online games than those without.

[Serapth]

But... the bottleneck is that copper wire that runs out of your house and down the street... not your pc.

Me thinks thats makes not sense.

[thecrazyd]

Lag is not that big a problem with modern cable internet. This is just bullshit.

[UnderHero5]

Yeah, my average ping for online games is less than 50 ms... usually cloer to 20.
Why is this needed?
Just pick a server with a low ping.
And like you said Sarapth... our network cards aren't the problem here.
This is just stupid.

Who would invest in this?
Did the people who invested in the Phantom feel weird not throwing their money away and needed something new?

[jacktion]

Bigot networks?! What kind of a name is that! How dare they flaunt their intolerance so brazenly! I have never been so shocked in all my days! I curse them! and their parents!

how was that? good trolling? i am almost getting the hang of it.

[Atorak]

Bigot networks?! What kind of a name is that! How dare they flaunt their intolerance so brazenly! I have never been so shocked in all my days! I curse them! and their parents!

how was that? good trolling? i am almost getting the hang of it.

Close....but you should REALLY try to include something about XBox 360 shortages or PS3 delays.

*holds up a 6.5*

[nfwolfpryde]

MAYBE if they got certain games to use some new hardware compression and MAYBE if they got the developers to adopt this standard and MAYBE if they got the servers to install support hardware for this obscure "standard" and MAYBE...

Maybe it's all BULL.

[DoubleUranium]

I wish I could get people to invest that much money into a stupid idea. I'm going to make a box that sits between the mouse and the PC, because mouse lag is getting out of control. Please send $4 million to ....

[Serapth]

Close....but you should REALLY try to include something about XBox 360 shortages or PS3 delays.

*holds up a 6.5*

Oh come on... he didnt use ALL CAP!!!11! once, didnt use l33t speak at all, and never insulted anybody directly. I figure a 4.8 is more accurate, but I see potential in the kid.

[Krom]

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.

[Rirath]

Lag is a console problem. It is not a PC problem unless you're still running 56K.

[IagoTheHunted]

New hardware + crappy internet connection = crappy internet connection.

This is SUCH bull. I don't even vaugely understand the premise they're trying to work with here. It's as if having a REAL fake product like the phantom wasn't obvious enough to tip off the CEOs about whats really going on, so they had to have something that sounded good to investors but was still obviously fake enough that they could clue in everyone without resorting to winking across the conference table.

Next week: "New company gets $4 million to solve low framerates with a better all new monitor".

[Heretic Machine]

This is the same crap that you can find in a dozen different programs at www.download.com Worthless snake water.

[Zawath]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlay_%28technology%29

The return of Power Play.

[Deadend]

Here is a better example of proper trolling...

"This is the single stupidest thing I have heard of, including iPod thongs, and Bluetooth Dildos. I hope the creators die from network cord strangulation. lol. PS, the PS3 is broken and is going to be a Xbox360 with a bluray drive that is why there are no 360s on sale, sony bought them all, double lol11!

Gothic suxors, lame Fable ripoff! Madden 06 is best ever! Nintendo Revolution will change games because I can play NES games on it!

Fittybabits wears dresses"

Now that deserves at least an 9 for being a near perfect troll post. Now, worship my mad asshole skills or I will shrug my shoulders and say something useful!

[Xerxes]

Lag is a console problem. It is not a PC problem unless you're still running 56K.

When did that happen... :rolleyes:
Lag is a issue if one party has a shitty connection. And that just happens to a unlucky soul. Are on of them bastards who used 56k modems to play on live cause mom wouldn't get them dsl or cable.

I had lag. In Ironforge. So bad I use to call it Lagforge before people told me that what they were calling it. Then I slapped in more memory. HO HO low and behold.

[OrangePulp]

I'd say the number one problem in internet play today is all the jackholes who inhabit the internet. What they need to do is find a way to let you punch someone who's on the other end of your connection.

[Dabombpizza]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlay_%28technology%29

The return of Power Play.
Beautiful refrence. I had almost forgot about that.

[Bushido]

I had lag. In Ironforge. So bad I use to call it Lagforge before people told me that what they were calling it. Then I slapped in more memory. HO HO low and behold.


It's "Lo and behold," not "low and behold."

The word "lo!" is a Middle English expression of surprise. "Lo and behold" is kind of the equivalent of saying "Well, hey, look at that!"

Allow me to finish your post..."Lo and behold, Lag has nothing to do with ram and Im a retard"

[Parsifal]

Maybe we should all e-mail the investors, tell them that this is likely all bullshit and perhaps save them time, money and embarrasment. Or maybe they would miss out on a great opportunity!

[ldi222]

Lag is the number one way to cheat in HALO2 online. Not because of slow connections though, but due to people using their PC as a "bridge" between your cable modem and your console to manipulate xbox live into always giving you host and thus the power to do all softs of lame things.

[Nadreck]

I dunno, I think people are naysaying a little early. While a hardware card won't suddenly make your connection faster, it COULD potentially work to minimize the amount of data sent over that connection. What immediately comes to mind is MCP from MUD games... it's a compression protocol that compresses/encrypts the data sent to the user... the trick is that it then needs to be uncompressed before you can see it.

In the same way that we're talking about developing a physics-specific chip to allow for real time physics handling, and DSP chipsets for real-time codec encoding and decoding in video, using some sort of high end encryption and compression system with a dedicated decompression/decryption board on the client end could go over gangbusters.

My final judgement on the stupidity or merit of this is reserved until they actually release what the hell they're really doing.

[Parsifal]

It seems really hefty to have dedicated hardware for the sole purpose of decompressing game information sent over the internet. Especially since developers would also want to minimize the amount of data sent to reduce the risk of lag. If the developers still aim to makes games able to play over 56k modems, it seems ridiculous to have a dedicated card that decompresses a few kilobytes every second. I mean, it's probably more taxing on the processor to play an mp3...

[ProfPuppet]

As someone said already... What magical powers will this technology have? If I'm getting 10ms on 90% of my hops, but 1k+ms on 10%, causing a horrible bottleneck... Is this thing going to use voodoo magic to fix that 10% and give Comcast reps heartburn?

Or I could just do my standard Inspector Gadget response... Go-go-gadget change macaddress mask and DNS and start getting a good connection again.

[Voodoo]

Did someone say Voodoo Magic?!?!

If anything can solve online gaming lag, it will be the elimation of the client/server model. The only reason I can see for an add-in card for network gaming is if you plan to do some sort of real time compression or encryption.

[Carnifex]

This will probably end up as the networking industry variant of the Phantom Console.
Lag isn't solved by slapping in some hardware at the client side, it's solved by applying packet shaping and traffic engineering in order to route traffic in better ways. Oh yeah, upgrading from a 56k modem should also do the trick :p

[Xerxes]

Yes you are retarded, but thanks for the english lesson franklin.
If RAM had nothing to do with lag, why the hell even slap it on the box as a recomendation. Going into Ironforge requires the loading of things, lots of things from buildings, objects, npcs, and players. That's were more RAM comes into play.

[Citizen Philip]

Woohoo! See my rock, you mudderfooker?! This is my tiger proof rock! You see any tigers? No. Well that means it's working.

In my other hand I have this PCI card that reduces lag. The requirement to use this card is a cable or DSL connection. See any lag?

[SteveRage]

jeez, are they trying to kill PC gaming with all this add on bullshit? It's getting to the point where (were I still gaming) I'd be less apt to buy PC games because of this "lookit more crap you gotta buy for your PC"-mentality. I'm not saying I'm falling for this crap, but seriously, with dual and quad proc PC gaining popularity, are we really taxing the processors to the point where we need add ons for all this excess "performance"?

[kickmybum]

I'd like to to think the investors were actually convinced something is possible to fix\reduce lag through nics before they would invest 4 mil. So I think it may work, even if only marginally.

[Voodoo]

This will probably end up as the networking industry variant of the Phantom Console.
Lag isn't solved by slapping in some hardware at the client side, it's solved by applying packet shaping and traffic engineering in order to route traffic in better ways. Oh yeah, upgrading from a 56k modem should also do the trick :p
That is exactly correct. At work I apply packet shaping & throttling at the firewall/router. On the switches I also do QoS. This allows me to offer our employees the ability to stream music to their desktop while stopping it from causing a major disturbance on our networks. Since all of our company now uses VoIP phones, traffic shaping/throttling & QoS is very important. Works really really good.

[BioGeorg]

Many game protocols already use compression, so it won't really improve what is perceived as lag by most people, unless the source of lag is network congestion because the application in question is requires a large amount of information to be exchanged. In fact, it can make things worse depending on implementation as compressed information is not not reacting very well to packet loss. Usually introducing compression means trading off some networking issues for a higher CPU load on client and server. I suppose that card could offload some of the compression work, but how that would affect actual network latency (lag) is not clear to me.

The end user PC is very rarely the acutal cause or major contributor to lag perceived in games anyway, mostly it is caused by routing (number of hops), general network latency and load, throttling / traffic prioritization on ISP or backbone level, faulty, badly configured or just cheap network equipment along the way, game server hardware or software, etc and game code - all of which are NOT fixable on the end user PC. So unless I miss something, that device sounds somewhat dubious, at least.

Game Network programming has come a long way to compensate for lag with things like client side movement prediction, etc and it will continue to improve over time as will the overall bandwith and speed available to end users. Your money is probably bet better on that than investing into a hardware device that claims to fix issues on your PC that are caused somewhere else (i.e. if someone runs an event in an MMO that is designed to bring every single player of the server into one zone, not network equipment or magic card is going to fix the issue that the server software and hardware won't handle it, the bandwith available to the server might not be enough - because it's a by design problem and has very little to do with lag as in network latency).

Plus, I agree with what has been said before, lag (as in network latency) is not the primary issue bugging people in online games, at least not in North America.

[DiBiddilyBop]

This is, quite simply, people taking advantage of people who don't know any better. Your layman investor would probably read "Internet games have lag. We're developing a card to lower lag. Gamers would buy this card. Gamers spend the most amount of money on their computers," and get all hard in their pants about how much money they can make if the company pans out. 99% of the people don't understand where lag comes from and how it's technically impossible to reduce lag through a add-in PC card. Watch Bigfoot Networks run to the bank...

[Dr Quincy]

Will there be a card to stop paedophiles?

[Bubby]

Many game protocols already use compression, so it won't really improve what is perceived as lag by most people, unless the source of lag is network congestion because the application in question is requires a large amount of information to be exchanged.

Many game protocols? For the game's network packets?

There are 2. UDP and TCP unless you go back a few years when IPX was used for lans.

[ruprect]

K gang, we need to come up with a pitch like this so we can get funding. Lets see. . . How about a mouse with "headshot seeking technology" that will increase the number of headshots you get by at least 5%. We'll propose developing special head recognition software to make the mouse pointer automatically gravitate toward the head.

I'll be damned if I let Phantom and these guys make up better stuff than we can. . . now can we get $4 million in funding?

[Voodoo]

Ok, I just read through the entire whitepaper for this company and it sounds very well thought out. Judging by his last mark in the network industry (SSL encryption hardware level NICs) this may be something here. Most of the posts here complaining about what he may have said he actually agrees with. Read over this whitepaper in the link and you'll see what he states is the cause of modern lag. Its very informational.

[BioGeorg]

Many game protocols? For the game's network packets?

There are 2. UDP and TCP unless you go back a few years when IPX was used for lans.

I said game protocol - the language the game client and game server talk to each other, which can be implemented over whatever networking protocol you might want to use. I.e. Neverwinter Nights compresses the content of some but not all server messages and uses UDP to relay those message.

[BioGeorg]

How about a mouse with "headshot seeking technology" that will increase the number of headshots you get by at least 5%.

Holy Crap, let's call it the ghost (http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=phantom) mouse.

[Lunar Blue]

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.

QFT. Also the feature to shove your foot up someones ass through the cable would rock.

[drakkarim]

ah, the power of marketing, guaranteed that there will be kids all over this when (if) it gets released, doesn't matter if it doesn't even do jack, as soon as the PR starts rolling, kids will swarm to it like flies to pies.

[Blade]

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.

What he said.

[BioGeorg]

ah, the power of marketing, guaranteed that there will be kids all over this when (if) it gets released, doesn't matter if it doesn't even do jack, as soon as the PR starts rolling, kids will swarm to it like flies to pies.
Just like the phantom...

[DeadPixel]

My number one battle against cheaters is to play with people I personally know. Once I see a cheater online, I search for the ignore button and never experience them again.

Problem solved.

[Bushido]

My number one battle against cheaters is to play with people I personally know. Once I see a cheater online, I search for the ignore button and never experience them again.

Problem solved.


YOU KNOW PEOPLE?

[Grimmjow]

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.

that is correct sir you win $1 BILLION, this company should be working on that shyt then lag,

[RMan]

Yea, what a scam. I can ping other machines on my network at less than 1ms, so if they make hardware infinitely better it still wouldn't have an impact on my lag. Maybe there's something crazy about the tech I'm not aware of, but I seriously doubt it.

[UnderHero5]

Yes you are retarded, but thanks for the english lesson franklin.
If RAM had nothing to do with lag, why the hell even slap it on the box as a recomendation. Going into Ironforge requires the loading of things, lots of things from buildings, objects, npcs, and players. That's were more RAM comes into play.
Dude. You're retarded. He's right.
Do you know what lag is?
Slowdown does NOT equal lag.
A slow frame rate is just that... a slow frame rate.
In recent years others retards, a lot like you, have begun calling slowdown "lag".
In the PC world, prior to 2 years ago, "lag" has (and still does) refer to your LATENCY in an online game!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag

Just because you call your slowdown lag, doesn't mean it's lag. And this entire thread is obviously about INTERNET LATENCY (read... "lag").
Ram has NOTHING to do with your internet latency (lag)

From the wikipedia link...
"Within computing, Lag refers to the time taken for a packet of data to travel between the local computer, the destination and back again. (see: Ping)"

Now shut the fuck up.

[H.Bogard]

Fittybabits wears dresses"

Now that deserves at least an 9 for being a near perfect troll post. Now, worship my mad asshole skills or I will shrug my shoulders and say something useful!

Still wont get a perfect score unless you say fitAbits...

[Steele Johnson]

I see people complain about lag all the time. It is an issue in most online games. Hardware compression (as opposed to software compression) isn't such a bad idea. But why just games? If file servers, web servers, etc, used the protocol and it decreased their bandwidth significantly, maybe ISP costs would come down as well. Maybe it would even fix the problem with web servers getting heavily hit.

We shall see.

[abso]

Like many others have stated, wtf? A pc card isn't the problem with lag... It's network congestion and bad routing that causes the lag...

[Hignaki]

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.
QFT,

again, for good measure:

Cheating is the #1 problem in online gaming. Not lag.

[mpsmith]

Dude. You're retarded. He's right.
Do you know what lag is?
Slowdown does NOT equal lag.
...
Just because you call your slowdown lag, doesn't mean it's lag. And this entire thread is obviously about INTERNET LATENCY (read... "lag").
Ram has NOTHING to do with your internet latency (lag)

From the wikipedia link...
"Within computing, Lag refers to the time taken for a packet of data to travel between the local computer, the destination and back again. (see: Ping)"

Now shut the fuck up.
Oh, snap!

I'm fucking sick of people calling shitty framerate lag, too. As for new computer inventions, I second the device that allows you to punch dumbfucks over the internet.

[Bushido]

Dude. You're retarded. He's right.
Do you know what lag is?
Slowdown does NOT equal lag.
A slow frame rate is just that... a slow frame rate.
In recent years others retards, a lot like you, have begun calling slowdown "lag".
In the PC world, prior to 2 years ago, "lag" has (and still does) refer to your LATENCY in an online game!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag

Just because you call your slowdown lag, doesn't mean it's lag. And this entire thread is obviously about INTERNET LATENCY (read... "lag").
Ram has NOTHING to do with your internet latency (lag)

From the wikipedia link...
"Within computing, Lag refers to the time taken for a packet of data to travel between the local computer, the destination and back again. (see: Ping)"

Now shut the fuck up.


Thors mighty hammer swings so sweetly.

[TrackZero]

I see people complain about lag all the time. It is an issue in most online games. Hardware compression (as opposed to software compression) isn't such a bad idea. But why just games? If file servers, web servers, etc, used the protocol and it decreased their bandwidth significantly, maybe ISP costs would come down as well. Maybe it would even fix the problem with web servers getting heavily hit.

We shall see.

Internet latency is compeltely based around your connection to your provider and the internet backbone you are riding on (if WoW is on another network with bad peering to yours, you can get lag, etc.) No mystical card in your PC has ANYTHING, A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G to do with that latency.

Also, your networking is already running on hardware, it's called your network card. It does the job just fine (the speed is so tiny, you'd never notice it even if you tried, your synapses can't respond quickly enough to see it). If you're talking about the TCP/IP stack, that's dependant around the operating system and cannot be some piece of hardware (no O/S manufacturer would allow it). Nor is it a cause of latency internally anyways.

Finally, bandwidth and lag are not the same thing. Having high latency doesn't affect your bandwidth/speed at all. It just delay the response time, not the throughput (it would not help web browsing, FTP, etc).

This announcement is either one of two things. It can be that they're simply being far too vague about the specifics of what they're trying to do, and mis-using the term "lag". Or secondly (and more likely), this is another Phantom. A bad idea by some hack who's used enough real-sounding jargon to convince some investors to back him on a scam of a product so he can embezzle money.

[The Letter 3]

This is the same crap that you can find in a dozen different programs at www.download.com Worthless snake water.
Worthless snake water on a plane.

[ProfPuppet]

I played for so long with really bad lag in WoW, and after a time I finally started getting really good pings. It was very, very strange to see other people rubberbanding while I moved smoothly.

Here's a question for people, if anyone is still reading this. I know there are a couple of ISPs targeting online gamers specifically, supposedly offering very low pings and stable connections, albeit low bandwidth. Has anyone tried it, and was there any difference?

[Mason]

MAYBE if they got certain games to use some new hardware compression and MAYBE if they got the developers to adopt this standard and MAYBE if they got the servers to install support hardware for this obscure "standard" and MAYBE...

Maybe it's all BULL.
Compression: Not particularly effective against latency.

[UnderHero5]

I played for so long with really bad lag in WoW, and after a time I finally started getting really good pings. It was very, very strange to see other people rubberbanding while I moved smoothly.

Here's a question for people, if anyone is still reading this. I know there are a couple of ISPs targeting online gamers specifically, supposedly offering very low pings and stable connections, albeit low bandwidth. Has anyone tried it, and was there any difference?
I've never even heard of anything like that, so I assume that's not happening in my area.
Road Runner is plenty fast for me. I get really decent pings to many servers in the games I play. Plus lots of bandwidth (I couldn't give that up).

[Mason]

Ok, I just read through the entire whitepaper for this company and it sounds very well thought out. Judging by his last mark in the network industry (SSL encryption hardware level NICs) this may be something here. Most of the posts here complaining about what he may have said he actually agrees with. Read over this whitepaper in the link and you'll see what he states is the cause of modern lag. Its very informational.
The white paper is on the ball, but it also doesn't leave much room open for the hardware solution that's being proposed.

Even if they produced a hardware card that could host the best client-side prediction imaginable, that only really compensates for a few causes of lag in a few minor situations, and that prediction has to be weighed heavily against the potential for cheating, if you honor the client's predictions.

[Borys]

This is BS.

Just as telemarketing.

[bapenguin]

Didn't read the posts but I just wanted to say: Lag isn't a problem from the PC->Router/Cable/DSL Modem but from the Cable/DSL modem to the internet is the problem. Gonna be kinda hard for PC card to overcome that.

[Voodoo]

The white paper is on the ball, but it also doesn't leave much room open for the hardware solution that's being proposed.

Even if they produced a hardware card that could host the best client-side prediction imaginable, that only really compensates for a few causes of lag in a few minor situations, and that prediction has to be weighed heavily against the potential for cheating, if you honor the client's predictions.
The solution that is company is proposing is not on the client side. Please read the white paper and you will see what this card is aiming at. After reviewing the previous projects that he has been involved in, I feel that this may be a viable solution to the current client/server model.

Have a look again and you'll see that the hardware solution his company is creating is a server side solution. So far there hasn't been a solution that this engineer has proposed which has failed. The NIC that he created with hardware encryption built in is extremely bad assed.

Read the whitepaper and you'll see his company identify the current cause of client/server model based gaming lag.

[51|RandoM]

I see people complain about lag all the time.

It is a shame they usually don't know wtf they're talking about.

If your ping to the server is 350ms and everything feels "slow" or "jerky" because of that ping, it is lag.

If everybody has a nice ping, but the server is "lagging", that isn't lag, that is an overloaded server, be it horsepower or connection.

If somebody tries to run FEAR at 1920x1200 with full eyecandy on a celeron A with virge vx video card and only get 1 FPS, that isn't lag, that is a computer that can't handle the load.

If somebody has a great ping, great hardware, great FPS, and is the only one on the server with "lag", or maybe one of a few, that is a network problem at some hop between his computer and the server, probably causing packetloss, not lag.

Simple fact of the matter, people don't know wtf lag is, don't know wtf problem they're experiencing usually, and then just go lazy route and say, "wtf, I'm lagging, anybody else?". Everybody else notices that they've got about an 8ms ping, 120FPS and buttersmooth gameplay and says, "no".

Then they'll usually spend 10 minutes back and forth trying to explain to the person that it isn't lag, but something else, and how to fix it. Of course, if that person had the intelligence to understand that, they wouldn't have run around calling everything lag.

They'll find more WMDs in Iraq than lag in modern online gaming.

[51|RandoM]

Read the whitepaper and you'll see his company identify the current cause of client/server model based gaming lag.

If their answer isn't "shitty programming", they need to go back to the drawing board. Hardware solutions like this are popular ways of dealing with software issues your coders aren't up to.

If I had a dollar for every meeting I've been in where the programmers are on one side of the table saying, "we need more horsepower" and the system architects are on the other side saying, "optimize your code", I could probably retire right now.

Hell, with most DBAs, it is always "give us more hardware" because they don't want to go through the hell of moving their application to a schema that actually makes sense and performs optimally.

One final thought, let us assume that this card actually improves client/server transactions, and does so significantly. What do you think will happen? My first guess is that we won't see them making use of this increased connectivity to enhance gameplay. No, instead, they'll be able to shave even more time off their dev schedule since they won't have to worry about writing tight netcode and then optimizing it. When I say "they", I'm not trying to say all coders are lazy bastards, what I'm saying is that there are deadlines and people work on the things they have to to make those deadlines if they want to keep their jobs.

[Xerxes]

Dude. You're retarded. He's right.
Do you know what lag is?
Slowdown does NOT equal lag.
A slow frame rate is just that... a slow frame rate.
In recent years others retards, a lot like you, have begun calling slowdown "lag".
In the PC world, prior to 2 years ago, "lag" has (and still does) refer to your LATENCY in an online game!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag

Just because you call your slowdown lag, doesn't mean it's lag. And this entire thread is obviously about INTERNET LATENCY (read... "lag").
Ram has NOTHING to do with your internet latency (lag)

From the wikipedia link...
"Within computing, Lag refers to the time taken for a packet of data to travel between the local computer, the destination and back again. (see: Ping)"

Now shut the fuck up.

UH5 you are so goddamned awesome. :rolleyes:

[Voodoo]

Did you read the white paper? Is there a solution available which can keep up with 9Gbps datarates?

I feel there is a need for improvement on frame/packet loss. Their solution sounds viable from their description. And their answer isn't shitty programming, is has to do with frame/packet loss at the server. This packet loss they found quite frequent when dealing with Sony's Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies when there are alot of clients in a particular zone. It will be interesting to see if it actually works in action.

I'm willing for them to try and fail then otherwise. With the client/server model of MMORPGs (in particular) there is a HUGE room for improvement.

[Steele Johnson]

TrackZero]Internet latency is compeltely based around your connection to your provider and the internet backbone you are riding on (if WoW is on another network with bad peering to yours, you can get lag, etc.) No mystical card in your PC has ANYTHING, A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G to do with that latency.

Actually, it's not just bad peering. If you're communicatiing with a server that is experiencing heavy load, that may cause latency as well. Cutting down the load will increase server responsiveness.

Also, your networking is already running on hardware, it's called your network card. It does the job just fine (the speed is so tiny, you'd never notice it even if you tried, your synapses can't respond quickly enough to see it). If you're talking about the TCP/IP stack, that's dependant around the operating system and cannot be some piece of hardware (no O/S manufacturer would allow it). Nor is it a cause of latency internally anyways.

Your network card does not have predictable processing, which I'm going to assume is part of their system. Processing packets in parallel during memory transfers without having to use your typical "store and forward" techniques would significantly cut down the latency. You're thinking too much in terms of network transfer and not enough about processing when the packets arrive.

Finally, bandwidth and lag are not the same thing. Having high latency doesn't affect your bandwidth/speed at all. It just delay the response time, not the throughput (it would not help web browsing, FTP, etc).

I'd have to assume that if the server used special hardware it would in fact cut down on the amount of traffic since processing of packets would be done quicker.

This announcement is either one of two things. It can be that they're simply being far too vague about the specifics of what they're trying to do, and mis-using the term "lag". Or secondly (and more likely), this is another Phantom. A bad idea by some hack who's used enough real-sounding jargon to convince some investors to back him on a scam of a product so he can embezzle money.


I agree that it is vague, and they could be full of shit. But on the other hand, it's possible to accelerate network speeds if you change the way tcp/ip and datagrams are processed on the client side (as well as the server side). It's not so much the actual packet delivery.

[Mason]

The solution that is company is proposing is not on the client side. Please read the white paper and you will see what this card is aiming at. After reviewing the previous projects that he has been involved in, I feel that this may be a viable solution to the current client/server model.

Have a look again and you'll see that the hardware solution his company is creating is a server side solution. So far there hasn't been a solution that this engineer has proposed which has failed. The NIC that he created with hardware encryption built in is extremely bad assed.

Read the whitepaper and you'll see his company identify the current cause of client/server model based gaming lag.

In the name of all that is good and pure, please stop telling me to read the whitepaper. Unless you're talking about something other than this (http://bigfootnetworks.com/lag/White_Paper_on_Lag_final.pdf), I've read it.

He makes no actual proposals regarding their hardware solution. All he says is this:
Some of Bigfoot Networks' early designs were based on technology of Harlan's own design that would virtually eliminate the lag that video game players experience when they play games online.
And his case studies identify multiple factors. Even using their own metric, there's no silver-bullet solution.

MMOGs are the games most in need of networking help, but that's because in the naive scenario the number of messages needed goes as O(n^2) with the number of players in an area, and at a certain number of players that'll saturate a pipe, no matter what you're doing. Writing good networking code that makes the right trade-offs for a game's very specific requirements is the best solution.

They already do this, of course, and it has consequences. The reason you can see cheaters fly around unnaturally in WoW is the same reason that, even in high-lag situations, your character always seems to move around smoothly. You can't have one without the other.

[Roc Ingersol]

This is what happens when people buy monster cables.

[Roc Ingersol]

They already do this, of course, and it has consequences. The reason you can see cheaters fly around unnaturally in WoW is the same reason that, even in high-lag situations, your character always seems to move around smoothly. You can't have one without the other.
Sure you can, you just need sanity checks once in a while.
Massmog companies just don't want to spend the server-side resources to do it.

[Voodoo]

Steele Johnson is dead on target. You are absolutely correct and I think that this is what this company/engineer is aiming at.

[Neosho]

Venio offers the operating experience, patience, and ease of doing business of angels while providing the due diligence, extensive network, and capital resources of traditional venture capital firms.

From shacknews. Seriously, wtf. And so this is a server side solution and PCI card then? Color me confused.

[Voodoo]

From shacknews. Seriously, wtf. And so this is a server side solution and PCI card then? Color me confused.
As far as I have found from my research about the company and the lead engineer's past creations, this is a server side solution. It is not (at least at this time) aimed to be a client side solution. My guess is that it will be a PCIx card because a PCI 33mhz 32bit slot nor a PCI 66mhz 66bit slot could no way provide enough bus bandwidth needed for such a card.

I can not find anything about this being a client side solution. Judgeing by the white paper and the cause they identified wieghed with what this engineer has done in the past, it must be a server side solution. Most likely a NIC that would be able to keep paced with the absolutely insane # of packets coming and going.

Their case in point was a overcrowded zone in Everquest or SW Galaxies where Sony saw a huge # of packets being dropped which causes massive "lag" client side. I would say this solution would be aimed at packet/frame processing without using the usual store & forward process used currently but on the server side. My guess is that whatever IC they develop could also find its way into a datacenter's routers/switches as well. Only time will tell. :)

[Thenetcase]

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[ElectricMonk]

i don't think it's a dumb idea at all, the pc isn't optimized for network communication.

an xbox and dreamcast etc are far more efficient in these regards.

[Carnifex]

i don't think it's a dumb idea at all, the pc isn't optimized for network communication.

an xbox and dreamcast etc are far more efficient in these regards.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Most NICs today work pretty well, performance is more dependent on drivers and protocol stacks, and the software that use them.

I haven't read the whitepaper yet, but this still feels a bit like an idea to create something expensive just to earn more money. There are still plenty of server side optimizations that can be done in software. Better congestion control and fairness to thin streams come to mind.

[Neosho]

So basically, if this happened, and worked, all of the hardware would be implemented on the server side. So i wouldn't have to buy anything/spend any money?

Hooray! for progress.