Dev Blog | Network Next

We’ve received a few questions about our network performance and about the “Network Next” option available in the game, so we want to provide more detail about this technology and how it affects your gameplay experience.

Network Latency

Latency (or “ping”)—the time it takes for a data packet to travel from the game client to the server—is one of the most important metrics in online gaming. The lower the latency, the smoother the experience.

We have servers in every major region to keep latency as low as possible.

However, latency doesn’t depend only on distance. Data packets pass through multiple routers, and for various reasons (network congestion, ISP / hardware issues, suboptimal routing, etc.) they might not take the fastest possible path.

The internet is generally optimized for high bandwidth, not low latency, so routing can be inefficient.

Network Next

We added Network Next to Rematch this fall, along with a number of relay servers per region, to improve the player experience.

Network Next works by introducing relay servers between players and our game servers. It dynamically evaluates, in real time and for each individual player, whether routing traffic through a relay server provides better network conditions.

Counter-intuitively, this helps some players a lot, especially when their traffic would otherwise take a slow or congested route.

(Network Next is open source. Tech-savvy players can explore the code here: https://github.com/networknext/next)

Who Benefits?

We accelerate the connection of roughly 20% of our players at any time, prioritizing those with the highest ping , we see around 70% of all players getting accelerated at least once each month.

Players who already have a good ping (under ~50 ms) usually won’t see any acceleration.

And, of course, Network Next can't always find a better route for some players.

Show us some data!

Here is an example of some players being accelerated. "Direct RTT" is the original ping( "Round trip time") and "Accelerated RTT" is the ping after being accelerated.

Players in North America

In South America

And in Turkey

As you can see, gains can vary greatly depending on various factors, ranging from small gains (15 ms) to massive improvements (upward of 500ms!).

More Details

(“Direct” (blue) is the “normal” latency , "Next" (green) is “accelerated” latency)

Here is a Buenos Aires player playing in the Sao Paulo region.

Route is the player being accelerated going through 2 server relays (google.saopaulo.2 and latitude.saopaulo.c). Client relays are pings to server relay for potential server route

In this case, the reduction in latency is almost 100ms.

In the following case, Network Next does a good job at reducing latency variation and jittering.

If you want more information, you can look at Network Next's REMATCH blog post: REMATCH Accelerated by Network Next 

Can I Disable It?

You can disable Network Next acceleration in the options menu—although there’s generally no reason to do so.

When Network Next is enabled, either your connection will be accelerated, or the game will simply communicate directly with the server as if Network Next were not enabled.

Does it work cross-region?

Yes absolutely ! Network Next also works cross-region: it can help if you want to play with a friend located in another region.

Here is an example of Indian player playing in Europe.

If you have any questions, remember that we will be holding an AMA session on Reddit on November 28th! We'll be there to answer questions you might have about Network Next, and the game in general.

See you next time!