[MUD-Dev] Mud hosting services

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 20:51:44 +0000 
Mik Clarke <mikclrk at attglobal.net> wrote:

> Hmmm. That's big. CthulhuMud runs on a 32MB, P133 using 20% of
> memory and less than 1% CPU.  Connection is some sort of cable TV
> link.  Whatever lag there is comes from the network.  I've has 10+
> players and a bunch of malfunctioning mobs (10 or so) that were
> each issuing 20-30 commands a second as they raced around the
> world.  Players were seeing all the arrivial and departure
> messages (sometimes as the mob crossed the room multiple
> times). The only visible effect of this was that CPU usage rose to
> 3%.  It did crash with a buffer overload if you tried following
> one - 30 room descriptions is more than the 'waiting to send'
> buffer can handle. I suspect the network link will give out long
> before the CPU and memory.

There's been some discussion on the list previously of establishing
fault tolerant protocols for server/client communications where both
sides specifically knew what data they had to have at any point (or
send thru and have confirmed receipt), and what they could continue
acceptably without.

The above however raises another possibility: The transmitter (can
be client or server) monitors bandwidth conditions to the receiver,
and tailors both its frame rate and the data content of the streams
to suit.  Thus, transposing this into a video stream analogy,
players on fast connections would get get high frame rates, players
on slow connections would get lower frame rates, and, and this is
the clever bit, everybody would always receive all the data their
end needed for logical correctness without that data (often) having
to compete for bandwidth with other lower priority data streams..

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


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