12th October 2008, 13:30
Breaking the hosting-barrier: Integration by preparation?
The Olympic Games 2008 in China created a picture of strength and independence to the world, media from nearly every country broadcasted easily to every home and the international press and TV stations stated they had the best working conditions ever. The politically and territorial isolation of China seemed to break up and even if it was just the “biggest show” on the Earth, people overcame the social barrier.
Even eSports made profit out of the Olympic Games – the Chinese government announced a program for hosting events like CESO and RotK back in April. Even if the first mentioned tournament was cancelled more and more events came out of nothing and were dominated by Korean and Chinese gamers.
Following the online-tournaments it might look a little bit different. Especially the Chinese-based team wisdom Nerve victory (wNv) suffers from bad conditions and missing hosts.
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| xiaOt suffers from hosting issues |
The result: Clanwars against European teams are delayed; players were forced on bad hosts and games started late at night. Although leagues like the WC3L introduced rules about bringing several hosts to a clanwar the situation isn’t really changing. After long discussions and useless arguments about who brought which host the teams have to agree on someone – even if it’s not the best solution.
Nevertheless it’s not the first connection problem in the international Warcraft business. Before inventing a software called GG-Client (the project changed its name to G-Arena) clanwars with Europeans and Koreans had to be played on Battle.Net – only a few American players addicted to professional Warcraft were used to host the clanwars in earlier season of WC3L. With the invention of GG-Client a platform for intercontinental matches was given although there were only a few good hosts available.
The next major problem appeared within in the time Chinese players rushed into the international scene. Everyone remembers the reaction of World Elite in the NGL ONE (April 2007) when they tried to use a line-up only based on Chinese players: Besides having internal problems they mentioned the bad conditions for their leave from the league. During the next months more and more US hosts were known to admins and managers and the situation kept getting better. At the same time another hosting software was invented by the creators of WaaaghTV: WaaaghArena should solve all the problems by giving the opportunity to create games dedicatedly whenever you want – two servers in Germany and Houston (Texas, U.S.A.) should support most of the intercontinental matchups.
The World Map
The choice of hosts is also related to the position on the world map, their connection quality and quantity of bandwidth. It’s not always possible to find a host that is exactly in the middle of two countries.
The World Map shows direct connections with internet cables.
Internet cables cross the pacific and atlantic ocean by connecting Asia with USA and Europe. Many of them connect China with America directly or via Korea and Japan. Generally you can say the position between two countries involved in a game is perfect for both by excluding the route via Europe, Egypt, India, Singapore and China (this problem is more related to the DotA-Games).
What’s the problem of wNv?
Compared to the World Elite the players of wNv got a worse and more unstable connection to America. World Elite opened their home base in Shanghai that is directly connected with the West coast. wNv is located in Beijing, hundreds of kilometres from the next direct routing point away, which creates two major problems:
- Internet quality in Beijing depends on the use of bandwidth of the surrounding towns as they all share the same cables to the next direct routing point to America. Also it forces wNv to play late at night against European teams.
- The more routing points a data package uses the more time it needs. Internet cables on land often are susceptible to external influences like wind, earthquakes or even rain.
Shanghai and HongKong with direct connections.
The unstable and unreliable connection to Beijing makes it difficult for wNv to prepare for a clanwar – sometimes it’s easy to find an acceptable host and sometimes hosts that worked the day before are useless. This is a problem you can only solve with two things: time and many contacts to America in your MSN account.
Best Software: Battle.Net, G-Arena or WaaaghArena?
Theoretically all hosting-platforms should be enough for guaranteeing a fair competition provided that everyone who is involved prepares for a clanwar. Based on deep technical background hosting-technologies could not have been understood by the majority of gamers, admins and organizers. In the following paragraphs I’ll try to keep the explanations and technical details as easy as possible for you to understand what technology is the best for you and where the host is supposed to be from.
Battle.Net:
The connection of the Battle.Net is based on TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and the speed is regulated to four data packets per second (pps). The Battle.Net in Warcraft 3 was created to support 28.8 kbits modems. Due to the limit of four packages per second a package will be sent every 250ms from the the Battle.Net to a client. The average time for full data-transfer results in 125ms plus the time for the transfer to and from the Battle.Net server (round-trip).
Example: Your round-trip (the time a packet needs to and from a server) is 200ms (Chinese connection to US West) to the Battle.Net
125ms + 200ms = 325ms
G-Arena:
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| Every room is a new VPN |
G-Arena allows a connection based on UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and advanced options in regulating the speed. By creating a VPN (virtual private network) it allows TCP/UDP connections with increased pps-rate to 10 and implements a social network system with buddylists, chatrooms and other features in seperated rooms. The average time for a full data-transfer results in 50ms plus the time for the transfer to and from the Battle.Net server.
Example: Your round-trip is 200ms (Chinese connection to US West) to the G-Arena Host
50ms + 200ms = 250ms
Battle.Net and G-Arena can create so called “spikes” when the frames per second (fps) from the host drop under a limit of 60 or 30 Hz. The game-engine can’t work faster than the graphic-engine and everyone in a game is dependent to the host's frame rate.
WaaaghArena:
WaaaghArena allows a connection based on UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and advanced options in regulating the speed. By creating a direct tunnel it allows to increase the pps-rate dynamical to more than 10. With an implemented compression of packages the transfer rate will be accelerated too. WaaaghArena is based on Java and needs the current version to start the embedded WaaaghArena application.
A dedicated server (ArenaHoster) can be set up by an admin
Example: Your round-trip is 185ms (small packages to US Mid) to WaaaghArena Host
40ms (f.e. 12pps) + 185ms = 225ms
The most interesting feature is the independence from a host. WaaaghArena is hosted on a server in a computer centre with an optimized connection and a huge bandwidth. The code of WaaaghArena allows ignoring the 30Hz / 60Hz limit of the graphic-engine and prevents spikes.
Try the best you can!
Having a professional eSports-team in China competing in online competitions needs a lot of preparation and patience. The location in China directly influences the speed of internet and the reliability of good connections. Clanwars shouldn’t start from 6 pm to 11 pm – playing before and after this time results in having a good bandwidth and ping to America. Searching Hosts from US West is really difficult when you haven’t asked them the day before. Remember 11pm in China is 7am in California. If a league provides WaaaghArena make sure your players and opponents know how the software and java works – but even then try to bring as many hosts as you can find – and hope for some luck.
Feel free to leave a comment if you got any question regarding technical details or which host works for what match-up.
The second part of the article features the hosting-issues in DotA and solutions in finding the perfect routing for integrating countries like China, Singapore, India, Kuwait and Iran and the possible usage of Listchecker, Hamachi and WaaaghArena.
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that's one helluva interesting article :)
<Xeqn> someone translated your warding guide to Chinese
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Where is the secone part xD !!!!
So what you wanted to say is that Waaaagh! Arena seems to better for competitive gaming... But for public play Garena is still far better and far more developed... Imo a good solution. Use one program for High Competitive play and the other for public play. ╦╦╦╦╦╦╦ The fence of the Ancients ╦╦╦╦╦╦╦
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(last year)
 #3 
imported_ixion 
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nice read, going to check out waaagh arena O_o
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This waaaght arena looks like crap.
Be yourself, there are enough other people.
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(last year)
#5 
Lun-
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nice article.
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(last year)
#6 
RESTINPEE
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"The Olympic Games 2008 in China created a picture of strength and independence to the world, media from nearly every country broadcasted easily to every home and the international press and TV stations stated they had the best working conditions ever. The politically and territorial isolation of China seemed to break up and even if it was just the “biggest show” on the Earth, people overcame the social barrier."
German media knew to cover quite the opposite than best working conditions ^^ | |
(last year)
#7 
Arceus
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nice read perdita,u must have researched alot for this article.
one side question btw:when will the NGL finals take place ? It's been so long since the regular season ended. Jesus Always Walks With Us
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(last year)
#8 
joneska
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interesting read, so now i understand why wNv are doing so bad :>
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(last year)
#10 
Guizac
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Wow, awesome article.
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(last year)
#11 
The1God
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WARENA FOR EVERYONE!
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(last year)
#12
RhoNeX
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yeah poor wnv, what about the european teams? not like theyre enjoying 6 hours wars against wnv, being forced to play on horrible hosts........
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(last year)
#13
Doso
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Option 4: Listchecker.
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(last year)
#15 
-cya-
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looking forward to second part.we here in india had major latency issues last pride......
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(last year)
#16 
EverShine
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Very nice article with a great topic, hopefully the technology in the near future can reduce the hosting problem or even eliminate completely, then e-sport can take another huge step foward. GJ
Last edited by EverShine at 13.10.2008, 00:58
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Awesome article dude..well done..
About the problem:Sad but true.. Life is a bitch,so fuck her xD//Gaming Royalty//.
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nice article :)
tho you show some false statements. The world map is for submarine carriers only. You're missing many routes via surface. That's why Russia or Sweden is for example empty. The problems that you've described aren't really the cause of bad traffic. Your position matters the least for example. One huge factor is that ISPs route traffic via the least stable carriers or last mile points. There are more points to rant about , but this summary is good from an unexperienced point of view :) The only solution that exists is money, without it you can only make the situation a little bit better. If you're interested I can tell you the story of Cyprus :) which is the best example of the problems that are gamers facing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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(last year)
#20 
Augury
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The situation is just poor in general. It's hard to find an ideal host for both sides typically and most pla
Having to play in poor conditions sucks, but delaying games for 20-30 minutes while you're looking for a host is unfair to everyone involved. In general I think the responsibility falls upon the admins to solve the problems more efficiently. www.entropy-gaming.com
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nice read..well-researched..XD
With great looks comes great responsiblities XD
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(last year)
#24 
Dendra
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i find it odd how "progaming scene" fails to solve such issues, wnv and the rest represent the highest level of wc3 right? quite weird as it deals with problems worse than sc amateur leagues deal with the same problems, dunno if it's so hard to solve a little lag problem. if it's progaming then lag should be the last concern to the pla
If force won't work, use greater force.
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(last year)
#25 
Caissa-
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Nice read, :).
OMG it's shiny!
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(last year)
#26
U-238
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As #19 and #23 have already said, routing is an issue, not just the physical distance between the pla
For example, here in Australia it's quite common for Asian internet traffic to be routed via the US - a very big detour. Similarly, traffic from Australia to Europe is typically routed across the Pacific and Atlantic, rather than across the Indian Ocean or through Asia which would be the geographically shortest way. It all comes down to the cost of operating those cables. It's alot cheaper to send a bunch of packets to the US and let them go from there, and so that's what the ISPs do. And traffic from Australia to the US will become even cheaper (up to 50% cost reduction) when the PIPE Pacific Cable is finished, giving ISPs very little incentive to take the shortest geographic route. This happens in other countries too - as mentioned in the article, Internet traffic from Europe to Asia is frequently routed the long way around the world. One way to solve that problem might be to bypass the Internet completely and li Last edited by U-238 at 13.10.2008, 15:20
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(last year)
#33
Dendra
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one note - there are some ways to solve the issues on the "progaming level" but im not sure how well would the scene handle it, for example isnt wc3 so popular in china that they can completely separate themselves from the world? as in the whole world basically splitting into several large progaming leagues ba
all major leagues/tours should be offline if it's progaming and from what i noticed wnv, mym, sk, etc. all play over internet some kind of leagues, quite strange for something that should represent progaming level and instead it is organised in the same manner as it is for lowest amateur teams. If force won't work, use greater force.
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(last year)
#34
ShamRock
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Think how much we suffer in india. whatever way you say we have the highest pings.... TT
In this world of sin i hope to surrender to the holy bliss.
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