They're not saying net neutrality is bad, but that it isn't well suited for latency sensitive applications like gaming. Which appears to be true; it's the whole reason Riot has their own network, after all.
Thing is that both are orthogonal concepts.
You can optimize a network for latency or for throughput.
A network optimized for latency can still be net neutral in concept and intention. Even an under-provisioned network that tries to fairly deal with optimizing for both low volume low latency applications and high volume latency tolerant applications at the same time while filtering out bad actors can still be net neutral.
Riot has their own network because they want a different kind of optimization than the traditional ISPs and Internet backbone providers aim for.
Network Neutrality was born out of the observation that dominant (read quasi monopoly/duopoly) were actively undermining offers from 'over the top' (meaning offered over the 'generic' Internet service rather than packets over a dedicated managed service offering from the ISP, think Netflix vs your ISP's own VoD offering) service providers by selectively shaping the traffic to degrade their offers. At the time, services such as Skype (pre-Microsoft acquisition) were their primary target as they impinged on the juicy profits from both traditional PSTN and ISP owned VoiP offers (ISP and Telcos were/are pretty tight).
The history of telecommunications has been a perpetual battle to reign in rent seeking natural oligopolies. To pretend no active fairness policies are needed or desirable is denying the obvious.
This by no means negates that lively and continual debates on exactly how to translate policy intentions and objectives into a real network fabric aren't necessary, as fairness is an emergent property relying on very many different punctual choices in configuration and deployment, the impacts of which can be detrimental to the objective both by accident or through deliberate obfuscation.
> Even an under-provisioned network that tries to fairly deal with optimizing for both low volume low latency applications and high volume latency tolerant applications at the same time while filtering out bad actors can still be net neutral.
How? We seem to be discussing QoS. As in ranking and prioritizing different services. Something that is fine for your local network, but has been used to punish torrent users by ISPs. Possible solution the wiki-page [0] describes are over-provisioning (as in never-even-needing-QoS) followed by a bunch of protocol stuff that would be problematic once being payed for.
I'm very much in favor of regulations like net neutrality for e.g. situations with no effective competition. But at the same time, I'd also accept specific connections with special properties for services needing them. A remote surgery wanting a highly reliable connection with consistent latency being the classic example. And also needing high bandwidth, in case your model only allowed for low bandwidth ever needing high priority.
I don't see a way to allow this while keeping a hard-line net neutrality over everything else stance.
"a bunch of protocol stuff that would be problematic once being payed for."
And there lies the rub. It is not that NN means ISPs aren't allowed to manage their networks and have to let it all melt down into a cesspool of fully congested non yielding packet spewers (which is a strawman the industry likes to portray).
If network traffic is shaped transparently and non-discriminatory (for competing services types, e.g. buffering all latency robust VoD traffic while letting all eSports gaming packets skip the queue to increase overall Quality of Experience (quality as experienced by the end users rather than pure IP level QoS is not a problem) to provide a fair playing field for service providers (favoring a YouTube packet over a Vimeo packet because the former cut you a deal is not OK) and customers (dropping Anna's Instagram packets because she did not order the 'social' option for a few dollars more, or more likely, Zero rating Instagram packets against a volume cap whereas TikTok traffic is not excused) , there is no NN problem
Intents in regulation are a thing. Disputes on interpretations and compliance are a normal part of the process.
The speed of light prevents people on the other side of the planet from having low latency. Networks can’t significantly improve latency at those distances. So, games need to avoid latency being an issue through game design or split things into separate instances.
In the end it’s just a question of where the servers are relative to you and nothing else really matters. Private networks tend to make things worse by having fewer paths available increasing the average minimum distance.
"In the end it’s just a question of where the servers are relative to you and nothing else really matters."
Assuming a 'fair' network. In absence of Net Neutrality it was "Dear company X, you better pay us or your packets will be delayed/dropped and your customers unhappy", and " Dear customer Y, you better opt for extra service A,B,C,D, ... if you want to Game/VoiP/VoD/Chat ..." and very much worse.
"Private networks tend to make things worse by having fewer paths available increasing the average minimum distance."
This is not how internetwork routing works. Obviously a straight line darkfibre line from A to B will beat any route a generic Internet can come up with. It is not a case of Riot Direct xor 'the rest of the Internet', but selectively supplementing by deploying handover points at strategic peering locations in the internetworking fabric where things can have a large impact.
As you say, Riot Direct is depending on the internet. Sure, adding routes can make slight improvements, but outside of high frequency traders or data centers users are semi randomly geographically separated. This puts a hard upper bound on any improvement of reasonable cost that quickly approaches just adding more routes on the internet.
Having said that, I admit it’s not pure snake oil and provides minor benefits to their customers.
When a server sends some state to a player, they player can’t get a response back without a round trip. The same is true in reverse. Further, the path through fiber optical cables is not the strait nor are fiber optic cables a vacuum. Using lasers through a vacuum tube strait from the user to a server on the other side of the planet might hit 134ms of light lag which is already a significant issue for many games.
PS: LEO satellite constellations like Starlink have a lower theoretical latency around the world than fiber as the signals are traveling in space, but a longer path. Significantly beating that is going to require magic aka a useful fundamental change in the laws of physics as we know them.
