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Interview: Bigfoot Networks

-- March 31, 2006 by: Chris Remo

"Bigfoot Networks is the only company founded with the sole purpose of fighting lag, and that makes us pretty unique in a big way." That was how CEO Harlan Beverly introduced his company to me at GDC last week, in a short meeting intended to explain a bit about the various methods Bigfoot will use to achieve its goals. Beverly founded the company two years ago with fellow University of Texas students, having had experience at a few companies, such as Intel, as a network architect working on a variety of network products. Bigfoot has gotten funding from sources such as the University of Texas, Fortune Small Business Magazine, and most recently venture fund Venio Capital Partners, which invested $4M in the company.

Bigfoot makes use of a variety of technologies collectively referred to as LLR, or Lag and Latency Reduction. The company makes a couple disclaimers about what its technology can and cannot do. It obviously cannot actually increase bandwidth, since that is dependent on your ISP. Additionally, the technology will affect each game differently.

Rather than being a standalone product, LLR is a technology that powers a chip which can then be integrated into hardware such as network cards, motherboards, and so on. The long term goal is to have servers using the technology and clients using the technology, but in the short term Bigfoot plans to reduce a consumer network card for home use. "We realize that gamers want this stuff now," Beverly admitted. "If you can get lower ping and less lag, especially twitch gamers, they want that yesterday. So that's why we've decided to go ahead and productize it." Beverly summarizes the benefits of LLR taking four main forms:

Less lag. Network interface cards with LLR, he said, will be engineered with gaming specifically in mind, so they will better deal with network problems that occur. In other words, "When bad things happen on the network, they will affect your game less." While Bigfoot can't do anything to keep your ISP from having problems, it promises to handle those problems better.

Lower ping. "LLR is a chip designed to accelerate network gaming, it's designed to offload networking," said Beverly, "and it essentially gets data to the game a lot faster than the computer could if it didn't have a processor down there that understands game networking."

More frames per second. Since all network-related operations are offloaded from the CPU to the LLR chipset, the CPU is freed up that much more. Beverly drew an analogy to 3D accelerator cards. "3D cards came out, and they gave you some performance benefits. You could play [3d accelerated games] in the software mode back in the day, and it was playable. You moved around, but the graphics weren't all that great" he said. "You turned the hardware mode on, and it was rocking. The resolution could go higher, the polygons went up, but it took some time to get there. Now think about what you can do with those cards now, and you could never do that with software. That's what we're trying to do with LLR."

Ping control. If playing against other gamers with higher ping levels, players will be able to dynamically raise their ping levels to keep competition fair, if so desired.

Though the upcoming consumer card is not intended for server use, the chipset itself has a number of advanced features intended for use in future server-oriented products. "That's one of the reasons we're here at GDC," said Beverly, "is to talk to game developers about building in support for game servers to use the advanced features of the LLR chipset. If they do that, they're going to get a lot better performance out of their servers, and that makes the game better for everyone." Bigfoot's server-side equipment will still be able to be installed into server systems for games not explicitly designed for it, though it may not have the same benefits, and gamers running their own dedicated servers could do the same.

Beverly was unfortunately reluctant to go too in depth into the precise workings of the technologies making up LLR, partly because it's still fairly early in the game in terms of the company's overall plans. He did note that the company has spent over a year researching causes and solutions to lag, as well as talking to developers to determine what game companies would like to see in game-focused network hardware. "We've been asking them, 'Hey, what's the problem, what's the problem with the network, what's the problem with your clients, what can we do to help?' And we're still doing that, we still on a daily basis are asking people what's causing lag in their games," he said. "That's why we're continuing to research those things, to develope innovative technologies to fight it." Bigfoot is also the "primary sponsor" of a site called EndLagNow.org, which aims to educate gamers about causes of lag and provide forums and blogs to discuss it.

Bigfoot has also been talking to hardware companies, exploring the possibilities of integrating the company's chipsets into third party PC hardware for gamers or server operators. While there were apparently discussions that took place during GDC, Bigfoot was unable to reveal any particulars. Another success, according to Beverly, is that they are "getting people to realize that lag is not something that you just have to accept anymore, and when I say people I mean both gamers and game developers. That's one thing we want people to understand, that you can do something about it."

While the company has not yet announced a time frame for its server-related products, it plans to have its consumer card ready some time this summer. Beverly was sure to stress that the card works for any network game straight out of the box, even if the game has not been optimized at the hardware. He acknowledges that early adoption of the technology is not target at the mass market, but believes that hardcore gamers will see immediate benefits. Unsurprisingly, the company is seeing a lot of skepticism since it has yet to really demonstrate its rather lofty claims. Still, Beverly is confident Bigfoot is on the right track. "You'll win more games," he said. "That's the bottom line."