Fiber-Optic cables are the backbones of the internet. There are currently 500+ major Network Service Providers that maintain those backbones in the United States - all of which connect to each other at one or two monstrous locations in major cities. Most data centers use something called long-haul transit to reach them - meaning they're often miles from where the action is. This extra distance adds to your pings and drastically slows down the gaming experience of other providers.

Standard data centers use something called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which counts the number of "hops", or routing points, between your server and your gamers. This is good enough for hosting some things - but not the world's greatest gaming network, since it does little to account for congestion, length of distance between those routing points, and a number of other major factors notorious for destroying a gaming experience.

Ubiquity, and inherently, DarkStar Communications, uses Mzima Networks' Force10 sFlow-enabled network with the industry's first and currently the only TERABIT routers in production, which does advanced analysis and route correction - and in other words, creates some of the absolute lowest average ping times to any given game server by reducing physical distance and potential problems that arise in sending information between our game servers and gamers.

Our hardware is fast. Really, really fast. Using some of the most powerful machines that the industry that the given point time will supply is a must - and puts us above most of the gaming industry in terms of server performance, but in itself is not enough.

More important than what we use is how we use it - we'll never overfill our systems, causing your gaming experience to screech to a hault. How many of us have been on a game server located in the same state, ping times stay low, and your character still runs like poop through a funnel? Oversold hardware is notorious for this, and too many hobby game hosts get away with this sneaky trick for too long. Choosing a host like this might save you 50 cents a month - but with performance consistently showing the power of a drunken llama, will that matter?