[MUD-Dev] Re: DIS: Client-Server vs Peer-to-Peer

[Greg Underwood]

At 03:09 PM 11/28/98 +0100, Niklas Elmqvist wrote:
>On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Jon Leonard wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Nov 24, 1998 at 10:06:23PM +0100, Niklas Elmqvist wrote:

<...>

>> > While I am at it and provided the answer is "yes, client-server is the
way
>> > to go" I might as well ask some additional questions: 
>> >  - How would you keep the "distributed" in DIS with a client-server
>> > 	architecture?
>> 
>> I'd recommend a hybrid architecture.  Insteed of a single server, use a
>> network of computation peers that interact using the DIS protocols.  Each
>> of these can have several "display clients" which take care of UI stuff
>> without handling any computations that need to be trustworthy.
>
>Hmmm... But the computation peers would be like a server cluster, since
>they most definitely could *not* be dished out among the players? Yes,
>that would certainly help in the scalability department.
>
>> If you have a trustworthy network and players, just use one peer per
player.
>
>Right. This is probably what the DoD DIS implementations do.

It varies.  I can't speak for many labs other than my own.  We are building
ours a bit differently.  We have an existing simulator that we are trying
to make DIS compliant.  Our sim runs about 6 human players, atm, each in
their own flight sim environment, with all the models communicating via a
hardware shared memory chassis.  That being the case, it's a lot easier to
let our simulation do it's thing, and slap a DIS gateway on a machine with
a shared mem connection and a net connection.  We have one DIS peer for all
of our players, but all that peer does is catch PDUs and pass the info on
to the appropriate models, via shared mem.

<...>

>Cyborgs or bots will always be a problem, and one that is hard to address. 
>Hopefully, the sheer size of the scenarios will ensure that this won't
>have *that* much of an influence (even if the German machine gunner has a
>aimbot, he will most certainly not be able to thwart the entire D-Day
>Allied landing force single-handedly).

Heh.  I think the intended use of DIS is one that redefines BOTs as a
solution to a problem, instead of the problem!  They WANT to hook together
a bunch of different computers, in place of people.

-Greg