AcceleratedPing

Use Case

You want to connect to a game server far from your region, for example you need to connect to a server located in UK from Australia (or vice versa).

Proposal

A direct connection over long distances usually routes your TCP packages over many different networks which produces a high ping and increased lag. However, if there is an AWS region in the country where the server is located, you can use AWS Global Accelerator to get rid off most of the intermediate networks.

What

You can use the Cloudformation file in this repository:

• To create a TCP proxy in the destination region that will only accept connections from your computer and direct your traffic to the game server
• And to enable AWS Global Accelerator to speed up your traffic to the proxy

Design

Usage

5 mandatory values to inform:

• Your public IP - The TCP proxy will only accept connections coming from this IP
• Server domain (or IP) - The domain (or IP) of the server
• Server port - If you do not know it, probably it is the default port for the game
• Proxy port - As the server, the proxy also has a port. To keep things simple, you can specify here the same port used in the server
• Proxy stats - The TCP proxy is actually HAProxy and, out of the box, it provides some usage stats, that is why you also have to inform:
  • Proxy stats password - Password of the user authorized to check the stats

4 optional value:

• Instance type - Set to t2.micro given that it is usually part of AWS free tier but you can use any 64-bit x86 instance
• Subnet CIDR - IP range used in your private AWS network where the proxy is deployed. Default: 10.0.0.0/28 (minimum valid range)
• Proxy stats - The TCP proxy is actually HAProxy and, out of the box, it provides some usage stats, that is why you also have to inform:
  • Proxy stats port - Port where the webpage with the stats will be presented. Default: 8404
  • Proxy stats username - Username authorized to check the stats. Default: admin

Outputs

Once the Cloudformation stack is deployed, in the Output tab you will find the following values:

• Proxy domain:port - To say in another way, the URL you have to use now to connect to the game server
• Proxy stats domain:port - The URL you have to copy in your browser to check the usage stats
• Proxy stats username - You informed this values when you created the stack, this info is here so all the relevant information related to the stats is in one place
• Proxy stats password - You informed this values when you created the stack, this info is here so all the relevant information related to the stats is in one place
• Proxy instance ID - The ID of the EC2 instance executing the proxy. You might need this information in case you want to have a look inside the EC2 instance. Notice that you can easily connect to the EC2 instance with Session Manager

WARNING WARNING WARNING

This infrastructure is not free, even if you are free tier eligible. Keep an eye in your AWS bill.