The year is 2015 and I am at the peak of my competitive gaming skills playing rated World of Warcraft (WoW) 3v3 arenas against and with the best players in WoW (Vanguard, Venruki, Cdew, Chanimal, Mitch Jones, Sodapoppin, Reckful, Glink, Snutz, Bajheera, and many more). The main 3v3 comp I was playing was Ret/Hunter/Healer and my team ended WoD S1 in the top 0.5% of the USA arena ladder achieving the Gladiator achievement (Ozar - Frostmourne (End PvP season in the top 0.5% of the arena ladder)).
I ended that PvP season as the highest-rated Ret Paladin in OCE and showing signs of contending to be one of the best Ret Paladins in the world. While being at the peak of my competitive gaming I was also studying at Murdoch University for a Bachelor of Science with a double major in:
- Internetworking and Security
- Cyber Forensics, Information Security and Management
I must admit all of this is said to brag a little, but it is mainly to provide context on how important gaming is to me. In 2015 I was living in my parent's house with my brother and sister who used to ruin my gaming sessions by deciding to download while I was playing competitive 3v3 arenas! Whenever they used to decide to download while I was gaming I would notice my ping would go to shit and there would be a lot of packet loss. This would cause me to lose competitive 3v3 arenas which in turn would make me lose rating and go down the rated leaderboard! Every loss was a damage point to my soul. It was already hard enough trying to play on USA servers from Western Australia against the best players in the world... When I was playing rated 3v3 arenas I would plead with my brother and sister to hold off downloading, but you know what brothers and sisters are like... It would fall on deaf ears the majority of the time. At the time my solution to this problem was to become nocturnal and only play ranked 3v3 arenas when they were asleep or weren't home to ruin my gaming session. Looking back these problems planted the seed for Ozot to be born.
Anime Time Skip (Like in Naruto/One Piece):
Flashing forward to 2019 I had experience as a Bunnings IT Network Engineer and thinking back to my hardcore gaming days I knew how to Network Engineer a solution to fix the problems I had back in 2015. I did market research on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) market to see if any ISP had resolved all the problems I once had and it turned out they hadn't. There were a lot of ISPs that marketed towards gamers, but none of them routed game traffic over the quickest terrestrial and subsea cables to provide the best ping to game servers. Only one of them QoS prioritised game traffic (who is now gone) to resolve the issue of someone in your house downloading while you are gaming ruining your ping and causing packet loss! I was at a crossroad, either complain to the current ISPs that they are not doing good enough or build it myself. In 2019 I considered myself a good Network Engineer. There is a lot of complexity in making sure game traffic is routing over the quickest terrestrial and subsea cables that I knew no Network Engineer in their right mind would do. There is a lot of complexity to QoS prioritising game traffic I knew no Network Engineer in their right mind would do either.
The Decision (The birth of Ozot):
I knew the problem well and I had personally experienced it in full force back in my hardcore gaming days. In 2019 I was no longer the hardcore gamer (neckbeard, goblin mode) I once was, but that didn't mean I didn't owe it to the next generation of hardcore gamers to fix the problems they are experiencing! Also, I can still foresee my hardcore gaming making a return one day and I would want to do it on a network built for gaming. Luckily for the gamers of Perth, I am a Network Engineer who is obsessed with this problem. I decided, screw it, I will build an internet service provider network engineered for gaming. That is how Ozot was born. In 2020 we were operating and trading and provided the best ping (latency), jitter (lag), and packet loss to game servers. Ever since then, we are consistently making improvements to our network and product. Our network is like the Borg, it is seeking perfection.
Our purpose is to provide the best ping (latency), lag (jitter), and packet loss to game servers.