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Investor Money Goes To Magic Lag Reducing Tech
Gamasutra reports on Texas technology company Bigfoot networks, which just received a $4 Million investment to develop a lag-reducing hardware PC card. From the piece: "According to the firm, it 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. The company explained: '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', but gave no specific technical explanation about how it intends to do this." Greg Costikyan spells it out on the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog: "So yes, there might be a business here. But if so, it will be a business built largely on bullshit."
I think it's obvious to all of us that the NIC is certainly not the weakest link in a connection. I know there has been some effort to produce NICs that handle the TCP/IP stack onboard, thus reducing the load on the CPU, but the potential difference between NICs is on the order of microseconds, if not less!
For those of you looking for quite entertaining reviews of products that are quite obviously scams like this, I highly recommend articles like this one on Dan's Data
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
Proper optimization of how data is transported in both directions is very important. Analyzing the connection as well as the route to the destination can probably be performed by software or hardware. Once the connection is analyzed, I'm sure there are real time changes that can be performed to better decrease latency and overall lag.
The question is why perform it in hardware rather than software?
Honestly, I don't see how user-side hardware (or software, for that matter) can reduce online activity lag. Sure, you might try to implement some sort of protocol that evens out the lag a bit by pulling excessive amount of data when 'lag is low' and use it to fill in the gaps when 'lag is high' - but that'd require a certain, no small, amount of heuristics and second-guessing. I'm certain many of early MMO veterans remember the ancient lag issues from the times of real-time simulations - fast ones in particular, such as flight simulators, suffered tremendously from lag-related issues such as phantom opponents (where your 'second guessing' lag-compensators assumed that opponent would continue in a straight line or at the same turn radius/speed, whereas he actually went into some wild maneuver). In the current state of affairs, I'm honestly not sure how much, if any, of the lag in your average MMO is user/connection-side and thus corrigible; games such as World of Warcraft, City of Heroes and Battlefield 2 are actually playable over dial-up - the trickle of packages isn't a lot of challenge even for a stable 56k modem. The bottleneck of modern day MMOs seem to be game servers going slightly ballistic when a certain area gets swarmed by a large number of active player objects (think Ironforge in WoW or Atlas Park in CoH) and therein lies the catch... how do you expect client-side hardware to correct server-side problems?
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
I wonder if these are the same people as the ones behind the magic cellphone boosting sticker.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Valve came up with this "PowerPlay" technology, which promised the same thing... but in the end it was as fake as Infinium's Phantom.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Maybe it's a regular old NIC, but part of the driver just shuts down all your P2P apps and torrents.
This isn't any different than the phantom console, magnets which supposedly help your arthritis or whatever book that Kevin Trudeau is bilking people into buying claiming this is information that the government doesn't want you to know about.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Not the least of which that there are VC idiots who will gladly pony up the money for a non-existant, never-to-be-made product simply because it has oodles of neat sounding words in its description.
*PT Barnum never actually said those words but people routinely attribute the phrase to him.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There are many different causes of lag, from network congestion, to I/O limitations on the server and client side. (Ever had an antivirus program start a deep scan in the middle of a match?)
Right now, with the proliferation of antivirus and antispyware software, I could see something designed to alleviate I/O constrictions as being very beneficial to gamers. Perhaps a battery-backup+cachedrive device to chain between the hard disk and the I/O controller. If an application can request that its data be cached, you no longer have to worry about seek times in reading data off the drive. (You could conceivably reduce your RAM and VRAM requirements, too!)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The card must have a reservoir of quantom-entangled particles that can be used to communicate instantaneously with the server (which has the other half of each pair). You'll probably have to subscribe to a service that ships you new bundles of particles each month to replace the bandwidth you use up. Be careful not to do anything important with it, or you'll violate causality, and cause all sorts of trouble for the universe...
I guess it was just a matter of time before something like this appeared.. The hi-fi industry has cables and magic boxes all over the place, now we get magic hardware.. I'm VERY curious to how they plan to eliminate lag introduced by routers that they have no control over. Not to completely blow them off, but I'm not holding my breath. Seeing is believing.
I have a semi-decent 5.1 surround setup, and have avoided expensive cables because I simply don't believe in it. Audio cables might benefit from better shielding and low capacitance wiring, but digital signals.. come on man. A bit across the wire that's "worn in the edges" is still a bit, unlike a sound wave.
"So yes, there might be a business here. But if so, it will be a business built largely on bullshit."
This quote comes to mind every time I hear a new MMORPG is being announced for that overcrowded, money-losing market. Won't be long before they start bundling a game network accelator card and a game network router as freebies.
The only viable solution... is all of them.
A NIC that produces "hyper-electrons" (patent pending). These "high energy electrons" move up to 80% faster than normal electrons. They also refuse to sit around in a "bit bucket." No sir, these bits are the firecrackers of bits. Not content to wait for a new assingment, they pass directly through hardware to thier destination. XYZ labs has figured out a "direct electron-spin" addressing system. Every access point on the new networks is assinged its own personal spin. The best part? Infinity is infinite, so you don't have to argue to include another couple extra bytes to the IP's if the networks grow too large! There's always another spin.
The new cards will be available in two flavors: P2P, and MMORPG.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
http://www.usr.com/support/overview-template.asp?p rod=s-game
http://www.tweak3d.net/reviews/3com/gamingmodem/
Their Performance Pro modem also claims to have a gaming mode:
http://www.usr.com/products/home/home-product.asp? sku=USR5610B
http://healthfitness.com.au/articles/highperforman cetraining/100_meters_sprint.htm
Is 200 ms. latency an issue for gamers? Probably. The reaction time for an elite athlete can be as little as 110 ms. So some gamers would feel disadvantaged if there was an extra 200 ms. between pulling the trigger and the bullet coming out the barrel.
The above doesn't apply to me. Mostly I'd get clobbered even if I had zero latency.
Despite the fact that this is probably smoke and mirrors, the overall attraction is pretty high. The difference between a 30-60 ping and a 60-90 ping is extremely significant at high end gameplay. Consider that hardcore FPS gamers spend $500 on a cutting edge video card to pick up another few frames per second and I think you can safely say that a solution that would reliably lower latency by 20-30ms would sell like hotcakes to the enthusiast crowd.
Mpath was doomed from the start because they segmented their users onto special servers. Gamers primarily want a better ping to gain an advantage, end of story. Lowering everybody's ping equally was a nice benefit, but it certainly didn't entice enough people to sign up for the monthly fees. When you add in the sharp skill break differentials in online gaming, it became very hard for mpath to attract anybody but the truly hardcore gamers - and they all preferred to play on ladder servers anyway.
One intriguing possibility would be if a company were to host a large number of dedicated servers for each popular online FPS, then have a solution that would allow people to pay for special access to those same servers with less latency. The thought of gaining a lower ping on a server they already play would be much more likely to sway gamers to sign up for an account then moving to dedicated servers with other low ping players.
Suck it, net haters. Beta hardware here. Using the special optimized ping utility they supplied with the board:
C:\>ping www.bigfootnetworks.com
Pinging www.bigfootnetworks.com [66.219.46.153] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Ping statistics for 66.219.46.153:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 1ms
See? *Obviously* it works. Heck, it's so powerful and well-optimized that it works even if I take the new net card out!
Imagine I write my software to take advantage of DDP/RDMA/whatever protocols that sit on top of TCP. I do this to reduce the memory copies on the server side (where these NICs are essential) - something like this might help even MMOs where the cost of memory copying in the network stack could be significant (I doubt this however - I mean you can do 2-3 GBit on a modern system with plenty of CPU to spare). Now with RDMA I get direct memory placement so the holy grail of zero copy on the receive side.
Now on the client - I can run an RDMA stack in software, slightly more overhead than a normal TCP stack, but not too bad. Now I sell you the same RDMA NIC that the server is using and bang - you get a slight speed improvement (realizing that these things are designed for 10Gbit networking, so your pathetic 768/10M cable connection is a sneeze to your modern system)
I can see some potential for accelleration - however, it would take rewriting networking stacks in these games, new RDMA hardware on the server side to take advantage of it - and rather expensive NICs for a minor performance gain on the client
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
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"Now, perhaps we can invent an add-in card that uses subspace carrier waves that will make a direct connection to your opponent instead of wi-fi or copper wires that go through switches and proxies. (oh yeah, and they need to have open source linux drivers, :)"
You do realize that that also addresses that "Ask Slashdot" about an Internet that couldn't be snooped upon, don't you?
RFC 1925 should be required reading for everyone who thinks they have a bright new idea for a network. In this case the company should pay particular attention to rule number two:
[2] No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light.
Since the signal has to travel a certain physical distance, there will always be unavoidable lag. Changing the NIC will have little to no effect, unless you are using some antiquated card that was designed around the early TCP/IP stacks. And gamers are hardly known for not having hardware that is so cutting edge the wounds are still bleeding.
I'm waiting until some new VC-funded company requests major sums of money to build a NIC that communicates on the basis of quantum enatnglement for zero lag. Not to buy one, you understand, since you can't send information faster than the speed of light -- not even by entanglement.
And have a read of the RFC I mentioned as well. Well worth the time.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
This article gives a few scant details at the bottom about how it's accomplished. Apparently they plan to "offload" part of the work the server does over the internet to your computer's anti-lag card. Might be useful in a MMO where "server lag" does happen. On the other hand, you might as well just buy one of these damn cards for the server and be done with it.
So this might work to improve things, but it seems that your software would have to be rewritten to use it. And I don't know mow significant it is, but one of the guys behind it is a former Intel chip designer. I guess there's plenty of stupid shitty intel chips in the world, but even they didn't want a piece of this.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The article quotes someone claiming they want to eventually "completely eliminate" lag.
That's going to be a really neat trick, totally removing distance, the speed of routers, and the speed of the physical loop itself from the loop.
Maybe they have secret alien ansible technology.
Get off my launchpad!
I have been working on a product that I expect to be a big seller; especially in the larger cities throughout the world. Families can use it while on vacation, and "Road Warriors" from the business world will find it invaluable.
It's called "0 P U", and it removes the smell from cab drivers.
As long as you are investing in projects that you aren't researching their viability, I hope that you'll consider my project. I just need some seed money to perfect the final product, do some marketing, and buy a company car... a Charger SRT8 should be sufficient.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
Just turn off the porn !
At least it claims to do much the same thing...
h p?CatID=36&FamID=80&ProdID=233/
http://www.hawkingtech.com/products/productlist.p
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I'm with the bandwagon on the BS'o-meter pegging.
There are multiple kinds of lag:
1) Server side. Nothing you can do about this, period.
2) Graphics. Have 200 toons on your screen at once? Have an anti-virus scan fire up in the back ground? burning a DVD while playing a FPS? Enjoy the slide show.
3) Client side connection. I have 3mb cable from charter, I experience connection lag about never, same goes for those people with DSL and T1/OC3 lines. But if you are trying to play an MMO over a 33.6kbps modem, you're probably going to spend some time ghosting and going LD. If you are trying to play a FPS over satellite, you're going to be shooting at people well after they have moved. And no matter what your little NIC does, it's not going to make that tiny 2' dish transmit data umpteen miles into outer space any faster. The only place I could imagine a beefed up NIC improving lag would be on wireless NICs.
Then there is also a difference in causes of lag. It can be either a ping issue (playing over satellite or long distance wireless), or a bandwidth issue (going over a 33.6kbps land line modem). A NIC isn't going to have much effect on pings, maybe a millisecond here or there for stack handling, but nothing noticeable to users. But if you use a service like Net-Zero's or Netscape's web accelerator, you could put a compression engine on the card. That would take the accelerator load off the CPU and could theoretically help, but it would also require the server to be able to (un)compress the incoming and outgoing streams.
-Rick
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
When you're talking surround sound (as the GP was), you're talking about Dolby Digital or DTS, both of which include ECC.
More improbably, though, is that Bigfoot Networks could implement and expose a programmable protocol processor on the card. This won't help existing games, but would enable developers to move some of their protocol closer to the wire, where it may be possible to buffer data more efficiently (send one "game state" packet to the protocol engine, which can then create the multiple unicast packets needed, instead of sending multiple wrapped network packets with effectively the same data across the PCI bus multiple times). However, this will require games to be adapted for it - somewhat unlikely - and even then would only provide significant help for game servers. But since many games - Quake, Half Life, et al - are hosted by home users, it might reduce lag in some situations.
Of course, without a product to play with or any real announcements from the company, it's just speculation at this point. But I'd love to play with a programmable protocol processor - such a device could open up new opportunities for network efficiency innovation (running PPPoE in hardware, integrated firewalls like the nForce ethernet, not to mention TCP, segmentation, and checksum offloading).
Stuart Cheshire's "It's the latency, stupid".
c y.html
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Laten
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Since this will presumably be an Ethernet card, the only thing I could think of would be if they had their card designed to backoff in a non-standard way (for instance, never picking a backoff timer over half of the standard maximum). On networks with light or medium load, that could reduce lag a little bit for the gaming machine, at the expense of other machines on the network, and it wouldn't be the first time people violated a standard to improve performance.
Of course, if you had two or more of these cards on the same network, or the network was heavily loaded, this could actually increase lag. But that would just mean you need to buy more cards!
Both Duke Nukem Forever and the Phantom console will have to be redesigned to incorporate this technology.
ROFL...L...L...L... mmalove has been disconnected.
Damn lag...
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Don't forget when using this technology to hit alt+f4 to enable god mode.
http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=108
Those modems never materialized.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Bigfoot Networks, huh?
... I think my point here should be obvious.
When people name their product or company after something that doesn't exist, then claim to have a secret ultra-cool device that works by magic,
Personally I'm beginning to think that these fake companies with "Look, we're not real, teehee" names are all founded by the same guy who just gets a huge kick (and a lot of money) out of it.
Glog!
Most people who have even halfway decent connections are not lagging because of a network.
Here's an easy way I have people check: ping Google. I've never gotten even 100ms round-trip to Google, and 100ms is still playable -- meaning that somewhere out there, there is a Counter-Strike server that I can play on without lag.
However, most of the lag will be caused by something else -- generally software. Don't be stupid and get infected with spyware, viruses, and worms. Don't do that on the server side, either. Use efficient code, and have a big enough cluster and fat enough pipes to handle your users.
In fact, if we could market Linux gaming as "reducing lag", we might be getting somewhere! That would eliminate far more lag than any other client-side mod, including bullshit cards.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
P.S.
Any check for $6,522 or above will be reported to the Department of Homeland Stupidity for further investigation.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Anybody remember from chem what happens when you place two dissimilar metals against each other?
Uh, nothing, unless there's an electrolyte in contact with both. I think if the back of your computer is regularly getting splashed with salt water, you might want to think about moving it to another location...
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---------------- Zeeeeeeeeee-TRansFer, l33t g4m3r NIC ----------------------
Just what you, the hardcore elite gamer needs!!!
With the brand-new Zee-TRansFer, technology, with the ZXfer stack, you can make packets travel FASTER THAN LIGHT itself.
The ZXfer technology card is driven by Good Over Distance (G.O.D.) engine power to make a super-duper small black hole, right beside your computer! The information then travels in hiperspace making a straight line through the curved universe. At the server-side, a l33tR34c70r (R) Power Plus Deluxe Edition trans-electron-quantum-wormhole is generated, putting the electrons right inside the server CPU core, enabling zero-microssecond (c) delivery.
Besides all that, you get FREE the *original* QuantumPen with the l33t h4x0r logo in it, just what you wanted to write that zillion-dollar check.
Also payable through PayPay and/or Viza.
Drivers available to Windoze, MakOS XXX, Linuks, QNK, FriiBSD, PalnOS and PocketBC.
All trademarks are copyright l33t h4x0r corp
Patents 234123412345, 5134523452345, 2345623451435, 13453452345, 134523452345234, and 23134345236764 through 456345634515434 pending.
You don't need "subspace carrier waves", you can just use a beam of neutrinos. Communicate at lightspeed with none of that routing-packets-around-the-Earth crap - neutrinos go direct.
You just need a linear accelerator (with a steerable beam) or nuclear reactor to generate them and one of these to detect them.
It's a bit more than I'd be willing to spend on my gaming PC, but they could probably get some Alienware customers to preorder.
I quit!
Bigfoot Networks, Inc. - Senior Video Game Network Programmer (C++, C, Game Design, Networking)
Full Time Employee will be responsible for architecture and implementation of programming interface and device driver interaction for a next generation network acceleration device targeted towards video games.
Responsibilities include API interface architecture and programming, development and implementation of sample implementations of the accelerator, implementation of other related game network low level software.
10+ years of game software design, experience in client/server game networking architecture and programming, socket programming, and superior skills in C++ and C, all a must.
Knowledge of Windows WDM, PCI, TCP/IP, and embedded programming, a plus.
Medical and Dental insurance is available through company.
For more information, please contact Harlan at BigfootNetworks dot com
It's just as viable as hiring someone for your business to smooth out the distribution of your operations.
if enough people bought the card, it might devise better ways for computers to connect to each other throughout the internet, which would benefit EVERYONE. so, ideally, it's a very viable and lucrative opportunity.
I, for one, am very interested in seeing how it would work.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
http://www.juniper.net/products/appaccel/wan/wxc/
Claims to although its an adaptive compression (builds the dictionary as your apllication is used) they claim an overall net decrease in latency because of the reduction in packets / packet size.
They also claim up to 100x reduction in bandwidth use.
The one that reduces the brain signals lag between thinking about investing in new high-tech to the time you realise that this is a scam.
:-)
:-)
This kind of lag ranges from ns to years depending on body wiring.
On a more serious note: It is possible to reduce lag by "generating" enough energy that will bend space time to the point were the server which is 1500KM away will be just next to your PC so you can go wireless.
You only need to find a way to escape the generated black hole so that you dont vanish at the logon screen