Virtual Private Servers (VPS) with tunnel/proxy

[Nero]

I've heard WoW players using these types of server setups to decrease ping. Has anyone used a VPS to reduce their ping for other games, such as BF2? If so, how do I set one up for access to our project reality server?

Reference:
http://www.gpforums.co.nz/showthread...5&pagenumber=1
http://lowerping.com/about_lower_ping.php

[ScratchMonkey]

Are you in Australia or the UK? The issues these systems address involve IP traffic over international links.

I'd be curious to know if Blizzard's disabling of the Nagle algorithm (in the last patch notes) has had any effect on this issue.

[Nero]

I'm in New Zealand, pretty much as far from the US servers as one can get without travelling to Antarctica.

I had a go at getting a VPN going this morning using putty and proxycap. I could get to the BF2 server browser and could only view the game servers with 0 ping (only about 14 bf2 vanilla servers) but could not join any games due to a 'Failure to connect'.

I think I could send info to the servers, through the VPN, but could not receive 'real' information back from them through the VPN. I forwarded about 20 ports related to BF2 via the VPN, but don't really know enough about how this all works to figure out my problem.

I don't know what the Nagle algorithm does but I'll try toggling that to see if that helps.

[ScratchMonkey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagle's_algorithm

It applies to TCP, not the UDP used for most games including BF2. WoW is unusual in using TCP. (TCP may be used by other games for stuff that's not latency-sensitive, like the server browser and downloading maps and other "bulky" data.)

The VPS tunnels UDP through TCP over a better connection than the one provided by many ISPs down under to the US. The tunneling is less efficient, so the only reason this works is because the normal channels used by down under ISPs suck really bad. Imagine sharing your game connection with every kid sister doing P2P in Australia. The VPS acts like a giant quality-of-service (QoS) bypass around the sucking connection.