The original BNet Index Server was a pioneer in game session indexing, but its centralized design cannot meet the demands of modern, global-scale gaming platforms. BNet Index Server 2 provides a distributed, LSM-backed, and strongly consistent (per shard) index fabric that achieves 99.999% availability, sub-15ms latencies, and millions of writes per second. By adopting sharded Raft consensus, parallel query routing, and monotonic read tokens, BNet-IS2 offers a production-ready evolution of classic game indexing for the cloud era.
| Operation | Legacy BNet Index | BNet-IS2 (p95) | |-----------|------------------|----------------| | Point lookup (session) | 12 ms | 2 ms | | Filtered query (10 shards) | 210 ms (sequential) | 18 ms (parallel) | | Write (update player count) | 45 ms | 9 ms |
Linear scaling of write throughput with number of shards up to 256 shards (simulated). Query latency increases logarithmically due to fan-out. bnet index server 2
The existence of Index Server 2 allows for several features players take for granted:
In the early days of Battle.net (pre-2013), patching was a relatively linear process. Users downloaded .mpq archives (Mo'PaQ) sequentially. If a file inside an archive changed, the user often had to download the entire archive again. The original BNet Index Server was a pioneer
Around 2013, Blizzard introduced NGDP (Next-Gen Download Protocol). This shifted the architecture from archive-based patching to content-addressable storage.
The original Index Server handled this by providing a linear list of these hashes. However, as games grew into hundreds of gigabytes, the index files themselves became bloated and inefficient to process. The original Index Server handled this by providing
Index Server 2 is the evolution of NGDP, designed to optimize:
The author of Her Asian Adventures is a solo female travel blogger from Spain. With over 10 years of experience in more than 15 Asian countries, she shares expert travel guides and tips to show that luxury experiences can be enjoyed on a budget. Passionate about empowering women, she is on a mission to help solo female travelers explore safely, affordably, and confidently.
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What a clever title! I had never even thought about whether it snows or not in Singapore.
You had me reading on to see if it actually snowed in Singapore! Glad to know it does not. The tropical climate is what would draw us to return to Singapore – even in the winter! We would certainly like smaller crowds, a bit cooler temperatures and less rain.
Hmmm. Snow? Tropical Singapore? You had me going. Good advice for the winter (or anytime in Singapore I guess)
My brain was turning into a pretzel when I read your headline: snow? in Singapore?! Could it actually be true?
Thanks for untwisting my brain: Loved your article, great insights!