[MUD-Dev] How many UDP sockets to use?

[PizaZ]

Thanks Jon Mayo, Aristarkh Zagorodnikov, and Michael Montague for
your comments and suggestions.  I must admit that I'm surprised that
it's virtually a consensus that I not attempt to implement my own
guaranteed messaging system on top of UDP.

I checked into the World of Warcraft using TCP/IP only and that
appears to be correct.  I've also quickly researched some of the
popular MMOGs out today to see what they are using.

  Asheron's Call - UDP only
    http://www.fuzeqna.com/asheronscall/consumer/kbdetail.asp?kbid=148

  EverQuest - UDP only accept for the Patching server
    http://www.iss.net/security_center/advice/Exploits/Ports/groups/EverQuest/default.htm

  EverQuest 2 - UDP only accept for patch servers
    http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=20213

  Star Wars Galaxies - UDP only accept for patch servers (no
  surprise since it probably shares code with EverQuest 2 right?
    http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=Tech%20Support%20Firewall%20Proxy

  Lineage 2 - TCP only (But this game is mostly played in South
  Korea and everyone there has super quality broadband connections)
    http://www.lineage2.wrw.be/faq.php#22

  City of Heroes - TCP & UDP (not sure what purposes for each)
    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=1688452

Was looking to find out what Guild Wars uses, but I don't actually
think it's a true MMOG anyway.  It seems that the "missions" are
actually hosted on individual users machines and "cities" are just
3d graphical lobbies.  All sewn together, it seems like a real MMOG
but it isn't.

Well I think I'm going to do what most of you suggested.  I'll use
TCP/IP at the very least for guaranteed delivery, but I am still
debating whether to use UDP for real time unreliable packets or a
separate TCP/IP socket.

One of the former id software programmers I believe wrote this article

  http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/MultiplayerProgramming.html

and in it he mentioned that he thought it was a bad idea to mix UDP
and TCP/IP.  He recommended users check out http://enet.cubik.org/
which is a reliability layer for UDP.

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