Re: [ProgSoc] Optus@nospam.Home

[Anand Kumria <wildfire@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Richard John Vagg wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Telford Tendys wrote:
> 
> > > > >Not much. The back channel of data provided by a quake/halflife/other
> > > > >net game is not likely to get to you to 300Mb / month. If you are just
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > And what are you basing that on?
> > > 
> > > Observered data upload versus data download from my home machine.
> 
> And you have observed many network games?

A couple but not Quake specifically.

> Sorry. I was replying specificly to the comment on network games. The 1
> megabyte in 10 minutes refers to running a client of quake3 connected to
> an internet server with only the one client, myself, connected.

Then the network portion of the game has been designed
incorrectly. All the games whose network traffic I have observed only
send the world initially. If there is only a single player they
optimise away network traffic by not bothering to send anything.

The rational is that the server will inform them when another client
connects.

> > straight away the difference between modem links and lan links.
> > The upload vs download ratio for a game like quake is a bit difficult to tell
> > but since it has to keep track of every movement of every item in the
> > game I can imagine that there is a lot being uploaded. Remember that one of
> > the players has to run the quake server which maintains connections to the
> > other machines, without that they are all playing on their own -- this player's
> > bandwidth will go up a whole lot extra.
> 
> With internet games over modems the server is located on a machine with a
> fast network connection. I play on a server that is run by my ISP. 

Movement updates and other informational messages amongst players
should be fairly small given a good server.  All you seem to be
telling me is that the quake network server does optimise enough.  I
can recall reading some thread that in order to achieve decent
performance through a network Quake `pre-sends' data that you may use.

> With a cable connection I would have hoped two or more players who wanted
> to break off and play a game of there own could just start there own game.

Nope, hence the `no servers' policy.

> How long can you play cricket for before it becomes boring?

for far longer than I could play quake, that's for sure.

Anand

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