Multiplayer Online Games over scale-free networks: a viable solution?

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the viability of deploying Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) over scale-free networks. We employ a general peer-to-peer overlay network; nodes have a number of neighbors which follows a power law distribution, p k ∼ k −α , the usual degree distribution that characterizes scale-free nets. Game events generated by nodes during the game evolution are disseminated through the network, based on some (push) gossip protocols run over the created overlay. We experiment with different gossip protocols. Results demonstrate that the employed gossip protocol may greatly influence the ability of disseminating the game data through the scale-free network. In particular, when gossip is performed using a small dissemination probability, a nonnegligible percentage of the network is not able to receive the message. This implies that not all players might be able to perceive the game event. Hence, parameters of gossip protocols must be properly tuned to guarantee a full network coverage. Concurrently, it is shown that, due to their low diameter, the use of scale-free networks allows to disseminate game events in very few steps. This could ensure a high level of responsiveness on the dissemination of game events, which is the main objective to pursue when dealing with MOGs.

New trends in parallel and distributed simulation: From many-cores to Cloud Computing

“…To validate ARTÌS and GAIA+, a number of models have been implemented, including wired and wireless communication environments [82,83]: using the ideas previously 16 described, it has been possible to manage the fine grained simulation of complex communication protocols such as IEEE 802.11 in presence of a huge number of nodes (up to one million) [15]. In the wired case, we are working on the design and evaluation of gossip protocols in unstructured networks (e.g., scale-free, small-world, random) [84,85]. Good scalability has been achieved, using off-the-shelf hardware, thanks to the use of adaptive migration and load balancing techniques.…”

Parallel and distributed simulation from many cores to the public cloud

“…In the wired case, we worked on the design and evaluation of gossip protocols in unstructured networks (e.g. scale-free, small-world, random) [21], [17]. In all of these cases, we obtained a very good performance increase with respect to traditional simulation techniques.…”

LUNES: Agent-based simulation of P2P systems

“…In this section we investigate the performance of LUNES by running on top of it some gossip-based communication protocols for unstructured peer-to-peer architectures. It is well-known that gossip schemes can easily spread information through networks, and are widely studied in the context of unstructured peer-to-peer networks [9], [10], [13]. In essence, according to this communication paradigm, all nodes are able to generate a new message to be disseminated in the network.…”

“…We now review the two different gossip schemes, employed to test our simulation architecture; more details on these schemes can be found in [10], [13].…”