Recently, a relay feature was added to Soku Lobby.  This enables people who couldn’t host games before to host. Everyone is able to host now!

Port forwarding is a common issue for people when playing some games. Soku is one game that requires the host to unblock their connection in-order to play. Some people can not configure their router for port forwarding, whether it’s because the router isn’t theirs, they’re at a college, ignorance, or laziness.

If your inbound connection is blocked, you will have the option of using the relay. The relay is a small program that runs on the same server as the lobby. It’s purpose is to accept packets and send them to elsewhere, hence the reason it is called a relay – it “relays” the packets. When you use the relay, you are sending packets through the lobby server. Using this method gets around the issue of port forwarding, but adds some latency in the transfer. When using the relay, figure that your gameplay data is sent to the server in New Jersey, and then to the other player. This can add significant lag depending on where you and your opponent are in the world. It is still better to port forward if you can.

Since the server that the lobby runs on has unlimited bandwidth, I’m taking advantage of that. The relay traffic is sent and received on a different network card and IP address than the lobby. This means the relay traffic will not affect the speed of the lobby. The relay program also runs independent of the lobby program, meaning neither will affect each other. In layman’s terms: if the relay or lobby are busy, they won’t affect each other. The time it takes to process a packet on the relay is very negligible. After monitoring the server for a short period of time, it appears that the relay can handle about 50 – 75 connections without having any issues. Any higher, and all players might see some increased lag and stuttering.