[MUD-Dev] Creating a MUD - Overview of design

[Edward Glowacki]

On Fri, 2002-01-25 at 13:27, Neil Edwards wrote:

> Secondly, networking. I have read that tcp is overly slow and that
> I should use udp (at least, I think that's what I read!) but
> surely with so little information being sent (it is only text
> based after all) then does that really matter?

UDP is an unreliable protocol, meaning that if you send a packet,
there is no guarantee that it will arrive at its destination at all,
let alone in the order it was sent.  With a MUD, you definitely want
the reliability provided by TCP so that all your data makes it
through, as well as the guarantee that by the time your application
gets the packets, they are in the correct order.  Most MUDS I'm
aware of use TCP, usually allowing connections via telnet.

In regards to raw performance, yes, UDP is a little better because
you don't have to acknowledge every packet, you can just send as
fast as the network can handle.  For real-time applications where
some loss is acceptable (say streaming video, where you need lots of
bandwidth but if you drop a frame or two it's really not going to
make all that much difference), UDP would possibly be the better
choice.

In short, stick with TCP.

--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
Michigan State University	
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