Sony faces Internet handicap

RECENTLY, Sony announced several internet enabling options for the PS2, including a modem, and a broadband/Ethernet connector. With the modem, multiplayer/internet gaming is a piece of cake, albeit a laggy, slow piece.

The cure for that, broadband (oh how I hate that word), more commonly known as DSL, cable or satellite. Since I only have experience with cable and DSL, and satellite is a tiny fraction of the market, I will think about those two scenarios.

Both DSL and Cable use NAT in some form or another. @Home, Roadrunner, Qwest and Covad (various flavors), the now expired JATO and the likewise defunct northpoint (AKA everyone) use dynamic IP addresses, and a NAT layer behind that, putting the multiple internal boxes on a 10.x.y.z, or 192.168.x.y non-routable addresses. This is 'firewalling' in ISP parlance, although any security person worth a damn would fall over laughing at this.

So, what does this have to do with Sony, and for that matter, Xbox and theoretically the Gamecube? Well, here is the rub. The computers (admit it, they are) on the inside can get out just fine. Once you initiate a transaction from the inside, the 'firewall' then opens itself to incoming data from the remote server (I will spare you the technical explanation) allowing for a 2 way conversation.

If a remote server tries to preemptively call your machine, *BUZZZ* NO! Thanks for playing, you have these lovely parting gifts. Firewall time. So, in effect you have a one way flow of information, or at least a 1 way initiation scheme. There are ways around this, but they all include hardware that is aware of the protocols used. None exist in my world as of yet. Again, so what you say? You can always just connect to the main Sony server, and you can play the games on it. Simple, no?

But here is the catch. The server setup is almost entirely done in a multi-tier way. You have your main web server, which hands you off to a chat room/game finder area, which hands you off to the game server. The game server for EverQuest is not going to be the same as a street fighter 9Vi Turbo-Hyper GoGo server. When you initiate a transaction, you initiate it to the chat server. If the chat server hands you off to the game server, the game servers requests will bounce off your firewall. Bad.

MS has this problem with the MSN gaming zone. This can be gotten around with some major gymnastics, but it is get-aroundable.

But wait, there is more. Remember the concept of peer-to-peer? You know, napster, IM, and anything else that the 13-20 demographic is addicted to (think that # is important for Sony?). Well, the firewalling kills that DEAD. Real real dead. If sony is going to mount a challenge to MS, they NEED a proprietary IM scheme, and they need a peer to peer file sharing scheme. Want to trade your 'not-pokemon' characters?

You need P2P, or you need Sony to have massive pipes that would bankrupt medium sized nations. Either way, there is a problem. As far as I can tell, there is no way around this. I have read some white papers, but none seemed really workable. Other than having everything routed through a Sony server, and solving the problems in the first half of this article,

I don't see a way out. Not nice whichever way you look at it.

That said, I am sure there will be hacks that work around it. You CAN port map, or get static IPs for your DSL modems, and most likely cable also (as of this writing, roadrunner does not offer this in my area, or at all as far as I can tell), but think about asking an asking an average white-trash, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, trailer-living American to go into console mode on their Cisco 678 DSL modem.

I see fireworks, and HUGE support costs for Sony and the poor ISPs. Redneck+routing esoterica=fun for all. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. µ