GameRail is a private network service dedicated to increasing the performance of multiplayer online games.
How does GameRail improve network performance?Improvement is achieved by routing customer connections away from the Internet and onto GameRail’s private network whenever possible. While game performance problems sometimes stem from issues with your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) or an overloaded game server, it is the series of network connections beyond your ISP—traveling across the public Internet—that are the culprit a vast majority of the time. GameRail directly connects with ISPs and game server companies to bypass the public Internet and its problems.
How does the Internet cause performance problems?The Internet is best described as a "network of networks" that all use a common language (Internet Protocol) to interoperate. The Internet is thus an overarching term used to describe the collection of its underlying networks which vary in size from home and small office networks to academic networks run by universities to the major "Tier 1" backbones operated by such companies as Verizon and Sprint. It is this design featuring a loose confederation of different organizations that creates both the Internet’s strengths and weaknesses. While the Internet as a whole is resilient to network outages—in line with its roots in a US Department of Defense project to create a network that could survive a nuclear attack—the countless interconnections within and between the underlying networks create numerous opportunities for problems to arise and performance to suffer.
What sorts of problems does GameRail solve?First and foremost GameRail will improve your “latency†(network delay) to connected game servers by providing an optimized path. The total latency for a given server is created by a number of factors including the number of network hops, the presence of network congestion (e.g. more traffic than a given network segment can sustain) and the quality of the handoff from one network to the next in a given route. This last item is of particular importance as difficulties most commonly occur when traffic leaves one institution’s network and travels onto another.
Sometimes the route to a given server on the Internet will seem completely illogical. For example, if you live in St. Louis and seek to reach a server that is also in St. Louis your data might first travel up to Chicago—or worse, even half way across the country—in order to reach the closest interconnection point between two networks along the path. In fact, the total distance of a network path plays a critical role: the speed of light adds about 8 milliseconds (ms) of delay for every 1,000 miles of travel through the glass medium of a fiber optic cable. Thus, a coast-to-coast connection of 3,000 miles will have an absolute minimum round-trip delay of 48 ms prior to adding in other considerations. Further, even under ideal circumstances each piece of network equipment along a path creates a bit of additional delay during the process in which it converts data packets from optical to electrical format, inspects the packets, routes them toward their destination and potentially converts them back to optical format. While GameRail can do nothing about the speed of light, it improves upon the haphazard nature of standard Internet connectivity by routing your gaming traffic onto its optimized network and thus reducing the number of hops, the attendant opportunities for quality degradation and the nonsensical routing often experienced on the Internet.
GameRail will also improve upon packet loss caused by network congestion and a phenomenon known as jitter. Packet loss, the failure of portions of a data stream to reach their destination, is typically caused by oversaturated network links or overburdened network routing equipment. Although data is sometimes discarded outright due to a lack of capacity, in other cases a congested network link will cause jitter: a variation in the delay of different packets within a data stream causing them to arrive out of order. In order to minimize network delay on well performing networks, a vast majority of games are designed using a protocol that does not allow for the reordering of such out-of-sequence packet streams. Instead the misordered packets are simply dropped creating further packet loss. GameRail avoids this situation entirely by providing an optimized, uncongested path to connected game servers.
My PC/server is on a [insert impressively large circuit type here] connection. Why would it have network delay issues?You could have a fantastically large connection to your home (say, 1Gbps or an OC192 connection at 10Gbps) but if the link were congested—loaded with more traffic than it could support—then it could be outperformed, in terms of latency and packet loss, by a mere ISDN line or entry-level DSL or cable modem connection. Such a relatively low-speed connection need only continuously provide enough capacity for the relatively small amount of bandwidth needed by a game (e.g. under 100Kbps) to achieve optimal performance. Stuart Cheshire discussed this simple concept back in 1996 in his famous rant,
“It’s the Latency, Stupid.†Will GameRail improve my performance for applications other than gaming?No. GameRail is designed to only optimize game and game-related traffic (e.g. gaming voice traffic).
How much does GameRail’s service cost?GameRail’s service is free during the beta test period while it optimizes its network. It will ultimately cost under $15/month.
Can I help beta test GameRail?GameRail is currently collecting beta test applications and will gradually increase the number of test users on its network throughout the remainder of 2006.
How can I get my ISP or favorite game server connected to GameRail? Contact your ISP or game server provider’s customer service department and request that they connect to GameRail. The cost for them to interconnect is free.
Will GameRail work with my Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo gaming console? Can I use GameRail from my Macintosh or Linux-based PC?The initial version of our software client will only work with Windows PCs. It may later be adapted for other platforms pending sufficient demand. GameRail will eventually be universally compatible with all platforms.
Can I play games across the GameRail network with other GameRail-enabled friends by starting up a local (non-dedicated) “listen†server?A future enhancement will support this type of game play.
Is GameRail available in Canada?Gamers in Canada will be able to experience network performance gaming across the U.S. but will not have direct access to our network until the first half of 2007.
Does GameRail host servers?No, we do not host servers. We feel there are plenty of great server companies to meet the needs of any gamer. We focus our energy on making the best network possible.
How can I get my College or University on GameRail?Just have your IT department fill out
this form on our contact page and we ill instruct them how to interconnect with us.
How does one use the GameRail network?GameRail users are required to download and install the GameRail Client first. This client allows a user to log in and connect to our high-speed network, giving them the fastest routes possible. The client is only available to beta users at this time.
Where can I connect to GameRail?GameRail will initially have network onramps in 8 cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and St. Louis.
Can I still use GameRail if there is no onramp in my city?Yes you can! In many cases ISPs do not have access to the Internet in your home city. Your data travels to a major access point on their network before reaching the public Internet. For example, the two major Internet companies in St. Louis drain to the public Internet in Chicago and Dallas. At that point, a gamer could get on our network and still experience superior performance. GameRail is also in the process of expanding to other cities.
What is an Internet Drain?An Internet drain is the point that you leave the private network of your ISP and access routers for other networks. In most cases these drains are only in major cities. The game servers you ping the best to are most likely on your ISPs network or in their drain city.