This document is about: PUN 1
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PUN Classic (v1), PUN 2 and Bolt are in maintenance mode. PUN 2 will support Unity 2019 to 2022, but no new features will be added. Of course all your PUN & Bolt projects will continue to work and run with the known performance in the future. For any upcoming or new projects: please switch to Photon Fusion or Quantum.

Regions

Photon Cloud provides you with global connectivity to allow low latency gaming all around the world. This is done by hosting servers in various regions.

As the available regions may change over the lifetime of a project, clients get the current list of regions from our Photon Name Servers.

Each region is completely separate from the others and consists of a Master Server (for matchmaking) and Game Servers (hosting rooms).

photon cloud regions' connect flows
Connect to Photon Cloud regions

The list of available regions differs per product (Fusion, Quantum, Chat etc.). With the Region Allowlist, you can define which regions should be available per AppId (see below).

Below is the list of regions for this product.

Setup Regions In PUN

ConnectToBestCloudServer(string gameVersion) connects your client to the Master Server with the lowest ping. Results from pinging all Photon Cloud Master servers are saved in PlayerPrefs.

Use OverrideBestCloudServer(CloudRegionCode region) to explicitly set another region as "best" one.

You can set up the region as part of editing the PhotonServerSettings asset. Connecting to a region then becomes as easy as calling PhotonNetwork.ConnectUsingSettings().

For additional setup info using PUN refer to the Initial Setup doc.

photon cloud regions' connect flows
Connect to Photon Cloud regions

Available Regions

Photon Cloud has servers in several regions, distributed across multiple hosting centers over the world.

Each Photon Cloud region is identified by a "region token".

To pass the region token with the "Connect" method of your client, call PhotonNetwork.ConnectToRegionMaster(regionCode, gameVersion).

List of available regions and tokens:

The strings for region tokens(or codes) are case insensitive. Example: "EU" or "eu" are both accepted and refer to the same Europe region.
RegionHosted inToken
AsiaSingaporeasia
AustraliaSydneyau
Canada, EastMontrealcae
Chinese Mainland (See Instructions)Shanghaicn
EuropeAmsterdameu
Hong KongHong Konghk
IndiaChennaiin
JapanTokyojp
South AfricaJohannesburgza
South AmericaSao Paulosa
South KoreaSeoulkr
TurkeyIstanbultr
United Arab EmiratesDubaiuae
USA, EastWashington D.C.us
USA, WestSan Joséusw
USA, South CentralDallasussc

Region Allowlist

You can filter the list of available Photon Cloud regions per application on the fly directly from the dashboard.

photon cloud: regions allowlist
Filter Photon Cloud Regions

Go to the dashboard and then click "Manage" for a chosen application and then click "Edit". You will find an input field where you can enter the list of allowed regions as follows:

  • the allowlist should be a string of region tokens separated by semicolons. e.g. "eu;us".
  • region tokens are case insensitive and are defined here.
  • undefined or unrecognized region tokens will be ignored from the list.
  • empty ("") or malformed string (e.g. ";;;") means empty list.
  • empty list means all available regions are allowed.

Once you confirm and save, the NameServer will return only the filtered list of regions. Thus, clients should select from that list. Take into consideration that dashboard updates propagation can take up to 10 minutes.

How To Choose A Region

Users in the US have the lowest latency if connected to the Photon Cloud US region. Easy.

But what if you have users from all over the world?

You can

  • a) let the game client ping the different Photon Cloud regions and pre-select the one with the best ping, read our how-to
  • b) distribute client builds tied to a region, so users from different regions connect to different Photon Cloud regions or
  • c) let the user choose a matching region from within your game`s UI.

Alternatively, you can d) let all users connect to the same region if the higher latency is acceptable for your gameplay, e.g. with any "not-so-realtime" games.

All Photon Cloud apps are working in all available regions without any extra charge. See pricing.

Photon Cloud's dashboard lets you monitor the usage of your game in each region and easily upgrade or downgrade your subscription plan. Go to your dashboard.

Best Region Considerations

"Best Region" option is not deterministic. Sometimes it may be "random" due to little variations or exact same ping calculations.

Theoretically, you could:

  • have the same exact ping to multiple regions from the same device. So it is random, if you end up with different regions on clients connected to the same network.
  • different ping values for the same region on different devices (or different retries on the same device) connected to the same network.

For instance, in the case of "us" and "usw" (or "ru" and "rue"), you could either make use of the online regions allowlist to select the ones you want and drop the others or connect to an explicit region.

To debug, set the logging level to "Info" and clear the "current best region" (in PUN: PhotonNetwork.BestRegionSummaryInPreferences = null). Have a look at the details or send us the log via mail.

Using The Chinese Mainland Region

You need to request access to the Chinese Mainland region for your Photon application. Send us an email so we could unlock it for your AppID.
You cannot subscribe to paid plans to be used in the Chinese Mainland region via our website. Reach out to us by email to receive a quote for any subscription.

The Photon Name Server has to be local to China, as the firewall might block the traffic otherwise. The Chinese Photon Name Server is "ns.photonengine.cn".

Connecting with clients from outside of China mainland will most likely not produce good results. Also, connecting from the Photon servers to servers outside of China mainland (e.g. for Custom Authentication, WebHooks, WebRPCs) might not be reliable.

Important: in the current phase, changes you make to your app via your dashboard are not automatically reflected in the app caches for China. Let us know by email if you have an update request there.

Also, for legal reasons, you need a separate build for China and we recommend using a separate AppId with it. For example, use a compile condition (of your choice) to change the AppId and the Photon Name Server depending on the build.

Follow the instructions corresponding to your client SDK to make a special build for the Chinese market.

PUN Classic

  1. Set the AppId to the application that has China region unlocked. If you want to use the same project and have different builds you can do something like this:

    C#

    void Awake()
    {
    // TODO: replace compile condition with your own
    #if CHINA
        PhotonNetwork.PhotonServerSettings.AppID = "ChinaPUNAppId"; // TODO: replace with your own AppId
    #else
        PhotonNetwork.PhotonServerSettings.AppID = "nonChinaPUNAppId"; // TODO: replace with your own AppId
    #endif
    }
    
  2. Open the "NetworkingPeer.cs" file and set the NameServerHost to "ns.photonengine.cn":

    C#

        // TODO: replace compile condition with your own
        #if CHINA
            public const string NameServerHost = "ns.photonengine.cn";
        #else
            public const string NameServerHost = "ns.exitgames.com";
        #endif
    
  3. Update CloudRegionCode and CloudRegionFlag enums to add new "CN" (or "cn") region token as follows:

    C#

        public enum CloudRegionCode
        {
            // ...
        // TODO: replace compile condition with your own
        #if CHINA
            ///<summary>Chinese Mainland, Guang Dong area, cn</summary>
            cn = 13,
        #endif
        };
        [Flags]
        public enum CloudRegionFlag
        {
            // ...
        // TODO: replace compile condition with your own
        #if CHINA
            cn = 1 << 12,
        #endif
        };
    
  4. Use PhotonNetwork.ConnectToRegion(CloudRegionCode.cn, gameVersion) to connect to Chinese Mainland region.

    C#

            // TODO: replace compile condition with your own
            #if CHINA
                PhotonNetwork.ConnectToRegion(CloudRegionCode.cn, gameVersion);
            #else
                // TODO: connect to any other region
            #endif
    
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