You know the routine: you find the game you want to play, you click play, and within seconds, you’re transported to a virtual realm of soldiers, mages, farmers and race car drivers. Simple, right?

On your end, it really is. But in those few seconds it takes for your game to load, computers are transitioning commands into IP addresses, data is being transmitted, received, and filtered, and computers, some of which are hundreds of miles away, are having separate and unique conversations to get you into a populated game as quickly as possible.

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