Marshall, Damien and McLoone, Seamus and Ward, Tomas E. and Delaney, Declan (2006) Does Reducing Packet Transmission Rates Help to Improve Consistency within Distributed Interactive Applications? In: CGAMES06, November 22 - 24 2006, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.

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Abstract

Networked games are an important class of distributed systems. In order for such applications to be successful, it is important that a sufficient level of consistency is maintained. To achieve this, a high level of network traffic is often required. However, this can cause an increase in network latency due to overloaded network hardware, which, ironically, can have a negative impact on consistency. Entity state prediction techniques aim to combat this effect by reducing network traffic. Although much work has focused on developing predictive schemes, there has been little work to date on the analysis of their true impact on the consistency of the system overall. In this paper, we identify an important performance-related characteristic of packet reduction schemes. It is demonstrated that there exists an optimal packet transmission region. Increasing or decreasing network traffic above or below this level negatively impacts on consistency. Based on this characteristic, it is proposed that predictive schemes exploit this optimal point in order to maximise consistency by efficiently utilising the available resources.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Keywords:	Distributed Interactive Applications; Networked Games; Entity Update Mechanisms; Dead Reckoning; Consistency;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Electronic Engineering
Item ID:	1283
Depositing User:	Dr Tomas Ward
Date Deposited:	11 Mar 2009 14:45
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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