Networking and Online Games

Grenville Armitage Editor and contributing author Grenville Armitage is Director of the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures (CAIA) and Associate Professor of Telecommunications Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. He received his Bachelor and PhD degrees in Electronic Engineering from the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1988 and 1994 respectively. He was a Senior Scientist in the Internetworking Research Group at Bellcore in New Jersey, USA (1994 to 1997) before moving to the High Speed Networks Research department at Bell Labs Research (Lucent Technologies, NJ, USA). During the 1990s he was involved in various Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working groups relating to IP Quality of Service (QoS). While looking for applications that might truly require IP QoS he became interested in multiplayer networked games after moving to Bell Labs Research Silicon Valley (Palo Alto, CA) in late 1999. Having lived in New Jersey and California he is now back in Australia – enjoying close proximity to family, and teaching students that data networking research should be fascinating, disruptive and fun. His parents deserve a lot of credit for helping his love of technology become a rather enjoyable career. Mark Claypool Contributing author Mark Claypool is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA. He is also the Director of the Interactive Media and Game Development major at WPI, a 4-year degree in the principles of interactive applications and computer-based game development. Dr. Claypool earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and 1997, respectively. His primary research interests include multimedia networking, congestion control, and network games. He and his wife have 2 kids, too many cats and dogs, and a bunch of computers and game consoles. He is into First Person Shooter games and Real-Time Strategy games on PCs, Beat-’em Up games on consoles, and Sports games on hand-helds.Philip Branch Contributing author Philip Branch is Senior Lecturer in Telecommunications Engineering within the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology. Before joining Swinburne he was a Development Manager with Ericsson AsiaPacific Laboratories and before that, a Research Fellow at Monash University where he conducted research into multimedia over access networks. He was awarded his PhD from Monash University in 2000. He enjoys bushwalking with his young family and playing very old computer games.

• Author Biographies xiAcknowledgements xiii1 Introduction 12 Early Online and Multiplayer Games 52.1 Defining Networked and Multiplayer Games 52.2 Early Multiplayer Games 62.3 Multiplayer Network Games 123 Recent Online and Multiplayer Games 153.1 Communication Architectures 153.2 The Evolution of Online Games 173.3 Summary of Growth of Online Games 273.4 The Evolution of Online Game Platforms 293.5 Context of Computer Games 324 Basic Internet Architecture 414.1 IP Networks as seen from the Edge 424.2 Connectivity and Routing 474.3 Address Management 605 Network Latency, Jitter and Loss 695.1 The Relevance of Latency, Jitter and Loss 695.2 Sources of Latency, Jitter and Loss in the Network 705.3 Network Control of Lag, Jitter and Loss 755.4 Measuring Network Conditions 796 Latency Compensation Techniques 836.1 The Need for Latency Compensation 836.2 Prediction 866.3 Time Manipulation 936.4 Visual Tricks 976.5 Latency Compensation and Cheating 987 Playability versus Network Conditions and Cheats 1017.1 Measuring Player Tolerance for Network Disruptions 1017.2 Communication Models, Cheats and Cheat-Mitigation 1088 Broadband Access Networks 1218.1 What Broadband Access Networks are and why they Matter 1218.2 Access Network Protocols and Standards 1238.3 Cable Networks 1258.4 ADSL Networks 1278.5 Wireless LANs 1288.6 Cellular Networks 1328.7 Bluetooth Networks 1348.8 Conclusion 1359 Where Do Players Come from and When? 1379.1 Measuring Your Own Game Traffic 1389.2 Hourly and Daily Game-play Trends 1429.3 Server-discovery (Probe Traffic) Trends 1459.4 Mapping Traffic to Player Locations 14810 Online Game Traffic Patterns 15110.1 Measuring Game Traffic with Timestamping Errors 15210.2 Sub-second Characteristics 15310.3 Sub-second Packet-size Distributions 15610.4 Sub-Second Inter-Packet Arrival Times 16210.5 Estimating the Consequences 16710.6 Simulating Game Traffic 16811 Future Directions 17511.1 Untethered 17511.2 Quality of Service 17811.3 New Architectures 18011.4 Cheaters Beware 18111.5 Augmented Reality 18211.6 Massively Multiplayer 18211.7 Pickup and Putdown 18311.8 Server Browsers 18312 Setting Up Online FPS Game Servers 18712.1 Considerations for an Online Game Server 18712.2 Wolfenstein Enemy Territory 18812.3 Half-Life 2 19812.4 Configuring FreeBSD's Linux-compatibility Mode 206References 20813 Conclusion 20913.1 Networking Fundamentals 20913.2 Game Technologies and Development 21013.3 A Note Regarding Online Sources 211Index 213