Gamerail
GameRail is a private high-speed network designed to improve the performance of online gaming. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, GameRail uses its heavily peered, geographically distributed network gateways in combination with various Internet Service Providers (ISP) to reduce latency (network delay ,“lag” or “ping”), packet loss, and jitter (delay variation) in online games.
GameRail works by acting as a bridge between ISPs and game servers. A client application is used to reroute gaming traffic away from an ISP’s typical connection through the Internet and instead onto GameRail’s private network, where it is routed directly to the desired game server. This ensures the shortest and fastest connection possible.
In Summer 2007, 34 million homes with broadband connections in the U.S. and Canada and 10,000 First Person Shooter (FPS) and Real Time Strategy (RTS) servers were attached to the GameRail network. GameRail initially targeted FPS/RTS games such as Counter-Strike, America’s Army, Quake, and ETQW and Massively Multiplayer Online Games(MMOGS) beginning with Fury because of their appreciation for a high quality, low latency connection. Support for console games is under development.