Network Next is now production ready.

This release add support for a preview XDP-based relay. This relay runs in kernel space on Linux and provides much greater throughput.

Much of the crypto and packet headers needed adjustment to work well with the XDP program validator, in addition I passed over all platforms and made sure that they respect a max MTU of 1384 packets, set do not fragment bit in outgoing UDP packets, and made DSCP packet tagging production ready across all platforms.

The next release will have the full XDP relay and will be the production ready 1.0.0 release.

This release updates console platform support to the latest platform SDK versions as of the start of 2024.

• Passed across all console platforms and verified correct operation on hardware with latest development tools.
• Created test client projects per-platform under sdk/build that you can use to build and run unit tests and connect a client to the linux test server in dev.
• Windows, Linux, Mac and GDK updated to use dual stack IPv4 and IPv6 sockets. This is required for iOS App Store approval, and for Xbox game approval.
• PS4, PS5 still use IPv4 sockets, because IPv6 support is optional on Playstation.
• Nintendo Switch still uses IPv4 sockets because the platform does not support IPv6.
• Updated GDK platform to use the preferred game port to enable WMM and DSCP packet tagging on Xbox platforms. This provides reduced packet loss and jitter on Wi-Fi when enabled. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/networking/overviews/game-mesh/preferred-local-udp-multiplayer-port-networking and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/networking/overviews/qos-packet-tagging
• Created separate functions so customers can set priority and affinity for client and server packet receive threads independently on each platform. This is useful in particular for customers with Windows servers, so they can tune the priority for server packet receive thread separetly to the client packet receive thread.

This release has completed documentation, and adds support for the following sellers:

• Akamai
• Amazon
• Google
• Datapacket
• i3D
• Oneqode
• GCore
• Hivelocity
• ColoCrossing
• phoenixNAP
• INAP
• servers.com
• Velia
• Zenlayer
• Stackpath
• Latitude
• Equinix

This release has small fixes to setup and improved documentation, as well as some fixes so Network Next plays nicely with restrictive hotel wifi that changes port number for the client.

Network Next is now a turnkey system that you can run for yourself:

• Full source code for the entire system
• Terraform scripts to bring up the dev, staging and production backends
• Terraform scripts for configuring the system and managing the relay fleet
• Load tested to 25M+ CCU

Please follow the instructions in README.md to setup your own instance of Network Next, and let me know if you get stuck anywhere.

cheers

• Glenn