Reducing game latency by migration, core-selection and TCP modifications
by Paul B. Beskow, Andreas Petlund, Geir A. Erikstad, Carsten Griwodz, Pal Halvorsen
International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication (IJAMC), Vol. 4, No. 4, 2010

Abstract: Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMOGs) have stringent latency requirements and handle large numbers of concurrent players. To support these conflicting requirements, it is common to divide the virtual environment into virtual regions, and spawn multiple instances of isolated game areas, to serve multiple distinct groups of players. As MMOGs attract players across the world, dispersing these regions and instances on geographically distributed servers is plausible. With Ginnungagap, we present the prototype implementation and evaluation of functionality for migrating objects to support dynamic re-distribution of game-state, with a distributed name server efficiently maintaining references to migrated objects. Core-selection algorithms, using players latencies, can then locate an optimal placement for a given region or instance. The variance of the measured latencies (and core-selection algorithm) is reduced by enabling our TCP modifications for latency reduction for non-greedy streams. Correspondingly, we anticipate a decrease in aggregate latency for the affected players.

Online publication date: Thu, 11-Nov-2010

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication (IJAMC):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com