Towards an active network architecture
ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
A comparison of reliable multicast protocols
Multimedia Systems
An efficient synchronization mechanism for mirrored game architectures
NetGames '02 Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Network and system support for games
Gathercast with Active Networks
AMS '02 Proceedings of the Fourth Annual International Workshop on Active Middleware Services
The Cost of Active Services in Active Reliable Multicast
AMS '02 Proceedings of the Fourth Annual International Workshop on Active Middleware Services
A Framework for Application-Specific Customization of Network Services
AMS '02 Proceedings of the Fourth Annual International Workshop on Active Middleware Services
Conductor: A Framework for Distributed Adaptation
HOTOS '99 Proceedings of the The Seventh Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems
Distributed Center Location Algorithm for Fault-Tolerant Multicast in Wide-Area Networks
SRDS '98 Proceedings of the The 17th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems
Building Dynamic Multicast Trees in Mobile Networks
ICPP '99 Proceedings of the 1999 International Workshops on Parallel Processing
Design and Evaluation of MiMaze, a Multi-Player Game on the Internet
ICMCS '98 Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems
Panda: Middleware to Provide the Benefits of Active Networks to Legacy Applications
DANCE '02 Proceedings of the 2002 DARPA Active Networks Conference and Exposition
Janos: a Java-oriented OS for active network nodes
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
Multicast routing algorithms and protocols: a tutorial
IEEE Network: The Magazine of Global Internetworking
Autonomic microcell assignment in massively distributed online virtual environments
Journal of Network and Computer Applications
Autonomic service hosting for large-scale distributed MOVE-services
IM'09 Proceedings of the 11th IFIP/IEEE international conference on Symposium on Integrated Network Management
NBiS'07 Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Network-based information systems
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Multiplayer games are representative of a large class of distributed applications that suffer from redundant communication, bottlenecks, single points of failure and poor reactivity to changing network conditions. Many of these problems can be alleviated through simple network adaptations at the infrastructure level. In this paper, we describe a model in which game packets are directed along the edges of a rooted tree connecting the players, aggregated during the upstream flight and multicast from the root to the leaves. This tree is constructed based on a heuristic, and can dynamically adjust itself in response to changes in network conditions. This gaming infrastructure is built and maintained using active networks, which is currently the only open architecture suitable for these types of applications. We have designed and implemented a prototype using ANTS that performs these adaptations for unmodified DOOM clients. We present analytical and simulation results that illustrate the reduction in communication overhead, and show that the multicast tree can quickly adjust to changing network conditions. The overhead of the active network-based middleware is acceptable, especially in wide-area networks.