Riot is Building Its Own, Dedicated Network For League of Legends Traffic

[Steven Bogos]

Riot is Building Its Own, Dedicated Network For League of Legends Traffic

The new dedicated League of Legends network aims to kill lag in North America.

Few games get to be as massive as League of Legends [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/league%20of%20legends?os=league+of+legends], which is now so big that developer Riot Games is building a dedicated network for its traffic, aimed at reducing lag. That's right, Riot has decided that the way ISPs handle regular internet traffic in the US isn't good enough for LoL, and are working with them to make a better network. Confused? Riot poster Ahab explains on the official forums:

"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. 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."

The solution? "We're in the process of creating our own direct network for League traffic and working with ISPs across the US and Canada to connect players to this network," says Ahab.

Ahab says that while the network still needs a lot of fine-tuning, it should be up and running in March. Riot wants our help in fixing the quirks of this crazy dedicated League of Legends network, and has asked anyone who has experienced sudden lag spikes since November to please fill out this survey [http://goo.gl/forms/xti4CIoy2r].

It's crazy to think that a game can get this big, but if any game can, it's League of Legends.

Source: Riot Games [http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support/AMupzBHw-na-server-roadmap-update-optimizing-the-internet-for-league-and-you]

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[loa]

I wish they'd care as much for us dirty EUW plebs...

 

[Ferisar]

I wish they'd care as much for us dirty EUW plebs...

I think it's kind of funny that, by and large, the EU interwebs are better on average then the U.S., but the rito servers out there have been having problems since the very beginning of that game coming out. So weird.

 

[DustyLion]

I wish they'd care as much for us dirty EUW plebs...

We east coasters feel your pain. Especially when the St. Louis hop is shitting bricks like it usually does.

 

[Sanunes]

I wish they'd care as much for us dirty EUW plebs...

There could be reasons, one of them is they are experimenting in North America first and then rolling out the rest of the world or it could be our outdated internet provider system is allowing them to have an easier time communicating with ISPs to shape and direct traffic.

 

[Rednog]

I wish they'd care as much for us dirty EUW plebs...

I think it's kind of funny that, by and large, the EU interwebs are better on average then the U.S., but the rito servers out there have been having problems since the very beginning of that game coming out. So weird.

But at the same time you have to consider that they are based in the US and it's probably far easier to deal with a small handful of companies that are dominant in NA than deal with many different companies across many nations.

Edit: Also want to add, last year there was a span of like 2-3 months where there just was an obscene amount of latency issues with several ISPS in the US because of how they were routing League, which made the game completely unplayable (pretty much the reason I quit). I would hazard a guess that Riot was losing time, players, and money dealing with it so this might be a step to fix that problem and future proof.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Kek. Remember that EU West special anti lag task force they promised for us ages ago? Yeah no.

>Fastest growing server around
>Riot don't give a fuck cuz NA is all that matters
>Better give NA RP

The smug smile anyone who's been playing on EU West for years when they hear NA has problems.

"You merely adopted the lag! We were born in it, raised in it! I only had stable ping by the time I was level 30!"

All those people with those problems with Garena in I think OCE must be laughing at us regardless, their game is actually fucked on the gameplay level as well as a technical one I hear.

 

[Dandark]

Sounds good. The game became completely unplayable for me a while ago and I had to quit. Im getting back into it now and it seems to have become playable again.

Hopefully this will end up being an upgrade for the game. I haven't noticed problems recently but I consider 180 ping to be incredibly good and lagless while only one disconnect during gameplay is a good game. A friend of mine who has better internet (And actually lives in NA) has been complaining about his connection steadily getting worse over the past few months though so I guess Riot are finally stepping up and trying to fix their game in between releasing overpriced skins and using Dragonball Z as a guide to designing new champions.

 

[Ylla]

All i see is people complaining about EW.... Im here in LAN (LatinAmerica North) with a constant 80 ping and a smile on my face.
For once, the often ignored part of 'Murica gets more attention that Yurop.

 

[SecondPrize]

This probably means server centers away from the west coast, because the problem with isps unnecessarily routing traffic to hell and back is pretty much just for stuff going to west from the east or central states.