Peer-to-peer support for massively multiplayer games

Knutsson, Björn; Hong, Li; Xu, Wei; Hopkins, Bruce R.

doi:10.1109/infcom.2004.1354485

Cited by 361 publications

(254 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Centralized architectures are traditionally based on cluster systems. The distribution techniques for game computation in such kinds of system are mainly based on splitting the game world map into different subspaces, or cells, and distributing these among the nodes in the cluster [6,23,24,26]. After the initial assignment, these cells will be dynamically reassigned among servers during the game, to respond to changes in the load caused by players' movements into the game world [4,11].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability

Barri

Roig

Giné

2014

Multimed Tools Appl

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MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) is the most popular genre among network gamers, and now attract millions of users, who play simultaneously in an evolving virtual world. This huge number of concurrent players requires the availability of high performance computation servers. Additionally, gaming aware distribution mechanisms are needed to distribute game instances among servers to avoid load imbalances that affect performance negatively. In this work, we tackle the problem of game distribution and scalability by means of a hybrid Client-Server/P2P architecture that can scale dynamically according to the demand. To manage peak loads that occur during the game, we distribute game computation across the system according to the behavior of MMORPGs. We distinguish between the computation associated with the Main Game, that affects all players, and the computation of Auxiliary Games that affects only a few players and acts in isolation from the execution of the Main Game. Taking this distinction into account, we propose a mechanism that is focused in the distribution of Auxiliary Games, as an entity, across the pool of servers and peers of the underlying hybrid architecture. We evaluate the performance of the balancing mechanism taking the criteria of latency and reliability into account, and we compare the effectiveness of the mechanism with a classic approach that applies load balancing to individually players in a Client-Server system. We show that the balancing mechanism based on the latency criteria provides lower latency Appl (2016Appl ( ) 75:2005Appl ( -2029 than the classical proposal, while in relation to reliability, we obtain a failure probability of under 0.9 % in the worst case, which is amply compensated by the scalability provided by the use of the P2P area.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability

Barri

Roig

Giné

2014

Multimed Tools Appl

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“…Another problem is that all state information would be stored in all peers which might allow a cheater to gain perfect state information which he should not be allowed to. To reduce the infeasible burden of client hosting the whole game state in the MMOGs environment, distributed schemes have been proposed to divide the game space into regional groups [17][18][19]. To address the inherent issue of information exposure, Kabus and Buchman [18] propose a system design that can prevent storing data on unauthorised clients.…”

Section: Means For Addressing Cheating By Exploiting Misplaced Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Security issues in massive online games

Zambetta

2008

Security Comm Networks

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“…In client/server infrastructure for MMOGs there are many known issues and solutions related to scalability [14], robustness [8], security and proof-cheating [1][16], bandwidth savings [8], network and transport protocol [15], and delay compensation techniques [13]. However the solutions usually employed are costly and lack of flexibility.…”

Section: A Client/server Topology For Mmog)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These savings could be then passed on to the player, greatly reducing the costs, or alternatively spent on developing the game further. The paper discusses the feasibility of using peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays [8] to support a typical MMOG, as a replacement for the client/server model. The technical details of these two topologies will be discussed, along with the issues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer-to-peer architecture and protocol for a massively multiplayer online game

Merabti

Rhalibi

IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference Workshops, 2004. GlobeCom Workshops 2004.

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Abstract-Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are becoming a very important part of computer entertainment business. With recent development of broadband technologies, the increase of the number of players is putting a strong pressure on this type of applications. Commonly used clients/server systems do not cope well with scalability, limiting the number of players who interact with each other, are not robust enough and might be subject to bottleneck due to their centralized infrastructure. These systems also force the developers to invest enormous amount of money on hardware and time to design complex software systems. To solve these problems we propose a fully distributed, peer-to-peer architecture for MMOGs.In this paper we discuss the issues surrounding MMOGs, the limitations in term of network infrastructure, and the lack of simulation environment to study and evaluate network architecture and protocol. We use a peer-to-peer (P2P) based architecture and protocol to provide a more scalable, flexible and robust technology solution than currently used infrastructures. We have conducted the design and implementation of a modular MMOG: 'Time-Prisoners', using a P2P protocol developed in Java and JXTA. The characteristics of P2P overlays enable to organize dynamically, and in transparent way for the users, the group of players according to their locations in the virtual world, and allow to design scalable mechanism to distribute the game state to the players and to maintain the world consistent in case of node failures.

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Peer-to-peer support for massively multiplayer games

Cited by 361 publications

References 32 publications

Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability

Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability

Security issues in massive online games

Peer-to-peer architecture and protocol for a massively multiplayer online game

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