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, 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.

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