Regions and relays

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Where the servers live

Shard Garden started with one server region in the United States. Players in Sydney and London both pay a long round trip.

Games run servers in several regions, and the matchmaker picks the one with the best ping for the players in each match.

The worst ping counts

For a group, the matchmaker looks at each region's ping for every player and picks the region whose worst ping is lowest.

A region that is perfect for three players and awful for the fourth makes the race unfair.

Quick check

Kai and two friends, all in Sydney, start a race. Which region?

  1. Australia
  2. Europe
  3. The United States
Show the answer

Australia

Every player is in Sydney, so the nearest region gives everyone the lowest ping.

Relays

Valve's Steam Datagram Relay sends game traffic through Valve's own network instead of straight across the internet.

Players' "IP addresses are never revealed", so nobody can attack another player's home connection. And the relay network can "find a faster route", which Valve says "improves player ping times".

Why relay?

Name one way a relay network helps players.

  1. It hides each player's IP address from the others
  2. It removes all latency
  3. It replaces the game server
Show the answer

It hides each player's IP address from the others

Hidden addresses protect players' home connections. Relays can shorten routes, but never remove latency.

True story: Riot builds its own network

In 2015, an engineer on Riot's network team explained why League of Legends lagged for some players. Its traffic passed through backbone companies and internet providers, which "route traffic to the lowest cost path, not the lowest latency path."

A trip that could take 14 ms took "a full 70ms". Two friends next door to each other, on different providers, could get very different lag. Riot's answer: "we build our own internet". Riot Direct put routers in ten of the largest internet hubs in the US and connected straight to players' providers.

Source: Riot Games: Fixing the Internet for Real Time Applications, Part I (2015), riotgames.com

Quick check

Why was League of Legends traffic sometimes slower than it needed to be?

  1. Networks chose the cheapest route, not the fastest
  2. The game sent too many pictures
  3. The servers ran out of memory
Show the answer

Networks chose the cheapest route, not the fastest

Backbone companies and internet providers route by cost. A 14 ms trip took 70 ms on a cheaper path, so Riot built a network that routes by speed.

Mixed groups

Kai in Sydney invites Priya in London. No region is close to both. The matchmaker picks the region whose worst ping is lowest, and the game's prediction and interpolation hide the rest.

Quick check

With Steam Datagram Relay, players can see each other's IP addresses.

Show the answer

False

Valve says players' "IP addresses are never revealed": traffic goes through the relays.

Real networks

Every part of this stage works on office wifi. Players are on trains, in lifts and on crowded cafe networks.

Bolt says: Next: testing on bad networks.

Fact-checked 12 October 2026