PING EQUALIZER. 'NUFF SAID.

[Dank420]

Short version, prior to my massive post I've got partially written out, the problem ends up being that if there's bad routes (I'll explain later), we can't detect that very easily. We can detect if a proxy goes down though. With the bad routes, everyone starts lagging, dropping connection, etc.
It's not uncommon for a provider to have network issues from Point A to Point B, especially over certain routes. The beauty of your home connection is that you'll likely route around these issues very quickly. However, sometimes datacenters are slower about this and end up continuously receiving packet loss over a certain route. I'll go into detail with this bit tomorrow/Friday, explaining why this happens, and how it'll affect the network negatively.

Ah. Understand it now. So basically, what you're saying, is that through the re-routing, if one of the proxies goes down, they would start to experience immense lag?

 

[subtato]

Ah. Understand it now. So basically, what you're saying, is that through the re-routing, if one of the proxies goes down, they would start to experience immense lag?

More so that if a proxy has a bad route and the proxy doesn't go down, that's when you'll encounter lag/dropping connection. We can detect downtime. In fact, if a server in any of our locations go down, it is automatically pulled from the servers you can connect to until it comes back online. But, in order to detect bad routes, that'd require additional software that may or may not be accurate, and could possibly negatively impact the network. Like I said, I'll explain more in depth later.

 

[Mooclan]

-snip-

Alright. So, from reading your posts, it seems like the proxy idea isn't entirely viable.
Fair enough.
But is it worth looking into another form of ping equalizing systems?

There are many more merits to a ping equalizer. Even if none of my suggested ideas are used or viable, I strongly recommend that the Developers look into something that will serve a similar function - to level the playing field.

If you're trying to nurture both a competitive scene and a young teen/kid-friendly video game server, then you need to make it fair and balanced.

Additionally, if MCGamer ever wants to create a certain section of Survival Games servers that are competitive, versus noncompetitive. Ranked/Unranked, which is something that a lot of people have suggested and/or requested.
Having the ping balanced out on only the competitive servers could provide an interesting factor.

Plus, there's still this option:

Another type of "Ping Equalizer" system is one where the server determines each player's ping/connection speed, and adds a small delay to the connection to the players with the lowest ping (fastest speed)
This would, as a result, make it so that players with lower ping have less of an "unfair advantage" over the players with a greater distance for their packets to travel.
This is an alternate version of the system that was said to be used by DotA 1 in competitive games.
http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=75107 (as well as other sources)

I think DotA had an interesting concept going. However, I don't think it would be fair to make the ping equal to that of the highest-latency players. Maybe just adding enough of a delay (in milliseconds) so that the players don't go below 50 ms, so that anyone within the proper region (For example, anyone within the continental United States) doesn't have a significant advantage or disadvantage, such as the one between a player with 24 and 89 ping.

This method would be less expensive, and easier to maintain, and is still a large step in what I (personally) think is a positive direction for both competitive and kid-friendly gameplay.