[MUD-Dev] Networking architecture overview

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Hook <brianhook at pyrogon.com>

[SNIP...a great deal of technical detail]

> So this architecture basically obviates the need to even have a
> discussion about UDP vs. TCP and unreliable vs. reliable and
> out-of-order vs. in-order.  It's all unreliable UDP delta
> compressed against the last known state.

> Damn that's smooth.

It is, but it has two scaling issues from an MMOG viewpoint:

  1) It sends the same amount of data regardless of how much
  activity is involved.  EQ and Camelot save a *lot* of average
  bandwidth use by only sending data on what is happening at any
  given moment.  Average bytes per player per second are reduced by
  about 25-35% this way.  We're talking about saving the equivalent
  of a T1 line for each 5K players.  When bandwidth is less of the
  operating budget, this may not be as big a deal.

  2) Seems like this could chew a *lot* of memory once you're
  looking at maintaining the game state + deltas for 2K+ players
  attached to a single server.  Especially if a problem in your own
  network causes a few seconds of connection loss, and you're
  tracking large deltas for all players simulataneously.

It's a really slick solution to the problems Q3 faces, but I don't
think you could scale it efficiently.

--Dave Rickey

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev