PlayStation Now DEMO (VIDEO)

[vivster]

SamuelRSmith said:

vivster said:

The problem is that I'm a network professional and I know where lag comes from and how to mitigate it. If the stream goes over the internet there is not much Sony can do to speed it up. It's not the bandwidth but the delay that's the problem. While Sony has the power to cut delay at their site by using faster hardware for video conversion they don't have power over the internet routes. Sony would need a deal with the local ISPs to guarantee priority for their packets but I don't see this happening. And even then there will be hiccups that are out of control of Sony and the ISP. Also there will be lots of players using wifi as a connection to their router, which will make it even worse.

This is one of the reasons why the service is US only, atm. To get this stuff at a reasonable level of lag, Sony is going to need a huge amount of infrastructure set up. Server banks close to every major metropolitan area (and those out of range will have to deal with greater latency).

You can set up a connection-oriented network using TCP to get a better guarantee of a continous stream of packets. Of course, there's no telling which route that the TCP connection would take at the orientation part. I guess the service could create one TCP connection, test its latency, and if it doesn't perform to a certain standard, try establishing a better connection (perhaps get it to create a handful of TCP connections at the start, then pick the best one).

I don't know where you come from but no one who can call himself a network professional will ever ever use TCP for a live stream. That's like using the postal service to send bits. They will be using UDP like everyone to stream video. Using TCP would make the games unplayable for everyone.

The bold part is silly too. You can't pick a "best" path or connection beforehand. The internet is a constantly changing set of routes and they can change every second. Not even the bytes of a single IP packet might take take the same route. The client side has no control over the routes or the delay, it won't even know the hop count so there is no possible optimization on client side.