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Provider/network mainly for China but also global
isthiscreaiv
Member
I have an upcoming game, most of the community will be from mainland China, but there will also be a smaller European community too.
Since it's a small game (project for fun), I'm not expecting many players and don't need a powerful server, but the issue is that. even though I will split the regions to 2 servers, I can see Europeans sometimes wanting to switch to the Chinese server for better matchmaking despite the latency.
Because of this, I'm looking for some kind of compromise between very stable servers for Chinese players, but also something that can be playable for Europeans too.
For this, I wanted to get a server in Hong-Kong, as it seems that latency to mainland should be about 40-50ms, but it seems that the providers that I checked have routing to mainland through Japan, which is something that I want to avoid at all costs.
I searched for info about this, and it seems that this becomes worse during the peak hour (evening) route.
Will CN2 network solve this? Some other direct route maybe?
What providers would you recommend for this? I want 2C4G initially, I think it will be enough, it's not a competitive game.
I know about Tencent cloud and Alibaba cloud in the mainland (those have 10-20ms to all of China), but those don't accept payment through crypto and probably won't be good for the Europeans.
Comments
You forgot to mentions budget.
Maybe @hostdare ?
Oh right, 10usd/month max (monthly billing) and as most bandwidth as possible. Speed 200M is ok.
worth talking to https://cloud.isif.net/home they are good at this stuff
Their Discord link isn't working, Telegram group is only for announcements, email no reply for now so if you have any other recommendations, I would appreciate it!
Since you care about the route to mainland, I'd ask any HK provider for a test IP and run mtr in both directions during the evening peak (roughly 20:00-23:00 China time) before paying. The return path from the VPS to China matters more than the inbound one, and it's often what falls back to a Japan or US detour. I run a small HK VPS myself, and the path can look fine at noon yet change at night, so test at peak hours. For a small game server, UDP loss and jitter matter more than raw bandwidth.
Both Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud support alternative payment methods, so why is cryptocurrency mandatory?
Alibaba and Tencent have VERY strict KYC. You can also look at Singapore, because Singapore had relatively good connection with Europe.
For reference, an average HK to Europe connection is about 200ms, better ones might go down to 150ms.
And the evening peak of China starts at around 18:00 UTC+8, or sometimes even earlier.
And keep in mind that the send and receive routes might happen on different links.
If you want to keep your latency down and still be stable, CN2 is recommended, even CN2 GIA.
Tools for testing China connectivity and latency (Chinese):
Because of my location. I'm sure I can't get a mainland server via any other payment method, they won't support ones available for me.
Thanks for the links, I knew about itdog, but didn't see ipip before.
About the KYC, I've since found some resellers that can do it and support top up via crypto.
CN2/CN2 GIA seems super expensive and has very low link speed. I've seen offers now ranging from 1Mbps to 50Mbps, with 100Mbps+ being extra expensive.
Understandable for a premium link though.
Right now my plan is to get an Alibaba/Tencent server and test. If the in-game latency is too bad for EU users, use an HK two-way optimized server for EU to CN connections as a bridge.