The amazing growth of i3D.net

Photo of big city at night with lights and connection layers over it
8 August 2020

They say that tough times show your true character. In today’s challenging economic climate, with travel restrictions, limited supply from vendors, the difficulties in the way we communicate and the all-around risk of COVID-19 on our health, our team stands strong.

Low latency is our business

Lowering the time it takes for a network packet between the player and the game server is essential. Low latency is the difference between being able to play a game, or experiencing unacceptable gameplay. While casual games are playable with 120 millisecond (ms) latency, competitive games suffer with latencies above 80 ms. For cloud gaming, latencies below 15 ms are required and this can only be achieved by having the best network connections, direct routes and many regional server locations.

Our success is measured in latency. We bring the game closer to the players by building one of the largest gaming networks in the world. Acquired by Ubisoft in 2019 and operationally independent, we continue our growth path to provide a regional presence everywhere in the world. That means we deploy our network, our servers and our software to data centers in or near all internet hotspots. And if a region lacks a large internet connection point, we intensively work on-site to connect all local carriers to our platform. Our goal is to connect people as direct as possible to our platform. No middleman, no detours.

Connecting everyone and everywhere

We build our platform in large data centers close to the player to optimize the gameplay for everyone. Our next step is to connect all regional internet providers directly to our internet backbone. This enables us to control the quality of the connection by preventing congestion and issues caused by 3rd parties. It also allows us to steer traffic to the shortest routes.

Some internet providers must be connected in multiple cities on multiple continents. Others require us to build out our fiber backbone to their region due to political, cultural or geographical issues. Our Middle East location is a great example of our policy. We built our network and connected our fiber routes to countries not interconnected to other providers and Middle East countries for various reasons. In these special cases, we’re the United Nations of the internet, the neutral party connecting everyone and everywhere. The people benefit most from this effort.

i3D.net’s ever-expanding network.
New locations around the world

In a normal year, the growth of our platform averages out to roughly 4 or 5 new locations. In 2020, however, we have amped up the growth. We have already opened in

  • Silicon Valley (Santa Clara)
  • Seattle
  • Madrid

 

And in the next weeks we will be live in

  • Fujairah
  • Mumbai
  • St. Petersburg
  • Toronto

 

Furthermore, we have the following locations in preparation for buildout:

  • Copenhagen
  • Stockholm
  • Shanghai
  • Santiago
  • Buenos Aires

 

We continue to roll out new locations based on opportunities we identify based on feedback we receive from players through social media, our website and the needs of our customers. This feedback loop is important as it drives our fast-paced scale out. New trends influence this. For example, building a cloud gaming service on our network requires opening new points-of-presence in the markets our customers choose to launch their services. When we open a new point-of-presence, games suddenly become accessible in new local markets and this leads to new revenue for our customers.

Growth at unprecedented speed

We have a sense of urgency that fuels our growth. Since founding the company in 2002, i3D.net’s revenue, team size and scope grow year after year. I’m incredibly proud of this continued growth and the way our team makes this their default modus operandi. Orchestrating the rollout of new platform deployments on 4 continents simultaneously while under travel restrictions…? That’s what our team calls just another day in the office. And, of course, we have a select group of vendors supporting our plans and providing the scarce resources to go full speed ahead.

Seventeen years of growth results in a lot of recognizing, many Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards, the Gazellen Growth Awards of the Dutch financial newspaper FD, and the INC 5000 fastest growing companies awards.

Our current success and growth is aptly illustrated by our IX ranking. The list ranks internet companies based on their volume of points-of-presence at internet exchanges via data pulled from PeeringDB. As of August 2020 we’re listed 23rd, a place amongst the networks from the largest internet companies in the world. Every new point-of-presence will help us trend upwards, step by step. With over a dozen new internet exchanges scheduled to turn up this year, we continue to diversify our network, get access to new more direct routes, and both our customers and the people connecting to our servers will profit from every improvement we make.

Screenshot of i3D.net's position of exchange count by ASN

i3D.net ranks at the top amongst global internet companies.

What’s next

We’re well known in the industry for our managed game hosting proposition: our software manages tens of thousands game instances hosting millions of players, and is backed by a technically focused team. Our customers talk to our engineers, to our developers and our operations team.

Looking forward, we will continue to go boldly where few have gone before. Our team travels the world to set up new locations, bringing the newest games closer to you. The network folks are developing new relations with ISPs globally, and continue to be our networking diplomats. Our operations team is continuing to build our scale and capacity of our platform. With every new game title launching on thousands of bare metal servers, having the capabilities to house this is vital. Our developers work on our next big product launches.

Main Take-Aways

Our success is measured in latency. We bring the game closer to the players by building one of the largest gaming networks in the world. In 2020, i3D.net has grown with exponential speed, opening locations around the world. Since founding the company in 2002, i3D.net’s revenue, team size, and scope grow year after year. 

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