Important question about the *Proxy Servers* for Stardock ---

probably would yeah. cant think of everything.

I mean, yeah, I imagine it would cause problems (that question in my OP was almost rhetorical; I just want a Stardock employee to comment), but I am wondering to what extent.  And honestly, most people who are fine with connectivity stuff should realize that they themsevles don't need the proxy at all.  So, hopefully the fortitude of us gamers will prevent any such greediness which would lead to mass problems. 

My guess is they'll eventually have it to the point where it can quickly determine the best connect to use.  Though really the only part that I see as slow is the NAT negotiation.  First the NAT Negotiator tries the 'quick way' of exchanging information to get the  connect between the two computers behind NAT.  If that fails it does a whole iteration of attempts on a range of ports to see if thats where the computers are possibly listening.  When that fails it goes to proxy (which in theory, should catch almost everything).

Ideally, if they get that iteration phase of NAT to work faster, there would be very little delay, and probably wouldn't need to specify what kind of connect you need.

Course all of this information was gathered by reading the forums, and documentation on the RakNet site.  But thats my guess for whats going on.  Though they sound like they're recoding their own net library, so who knows what it does now

Anyway, my point - I think this is temporary.  Ideally no one would use proxy servers.  But for now it catches the issues.

I have no idea why someone would want to jump on a proxy instead of staying as a direct connect or NAT.  I don't think this was thought of because the majority of the player base will not even think to try and connect to the proxy, and some might not even know the option exists if they initially do not have any problems.

i would use proxy servers as a last resort. I have nps connecting with others on both pcs i play on

I would use them as a last resort generally because they do add some latency.

But we have the infrastructure to handle insane numbers of users.  

proxys are laggier, so no reason to use them if you dont have to.

That's basically what I wanted to know.  Cool.  Thanks.