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Abstract-This paper describes the results of the first comprehensive analysis of a range of popular on-line, multiplayer, game servers. The results show that the traffic behavior of these servers is highly predictable and can be attributed to the fact that current game designs target the saturation of the narrowest, last-mile link. Specifically, in order to maximize the interactivity of the game itself and to provide relatively uniform experiences between players playing over different network speeds, on-line games typically fix their usage requirements in such a way as to saturate the network link of their lowest speed players. While the traffic observed is highly predictable, the traces also indicate that these on-line games provide significant challenges to current network infrastructure. As a result of synchronous game logic requiring an extreme amount of interactivity, a close look at the trace reveals the presence of large, highly periodic, bursts of small packets. With such stringent demands on interactivity, routers must be designed with enough capacity to quickly route such bursts without delay.

The fundamental goal of virtual worlds is to provide users with the illusion that they are all seeing and interacting with each other in a consistent world. State melding is the core of creating this illusion of a shared reality. It includes two major parts: consistency maintenance and state update dissemination. Welldesigned state melding technologies are also critical for developing a virtual world that can scale to a large number of concurrent users and provide satisfying user experiences. In this article, we present a taxonomy of consistency models and categorization of state update dissemination technologies for virtual worlds. To connect theories and practices, we then apply the taxonomy to case study several state-of-the-art virtual worlds. We also discuss challenges and promising solutions of state melding in large-scale virtual worlds. This survey aims to provide a thorough understanding of existing approaches and their strength and limitations and to assist in developing solutions to improve scalability and performance of virtual worlds.

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